


Under The Bats' Wing

by IAmWhelmed



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Miraculous Ladybug, Super Sons (Comics)
Genre: Adrien and Alya are Suspicious, Adrinette | Adrien Agreste/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Bat Bros bond with Marinette, Batman Trains Ladybug, Chat Noir is Worried, Damian Wayne Needs a Hug, F/M, Identity Reveal, Jealous Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir, Jealous Jonathan Kent, Ladynoir | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng as Ladybug, Lila Rossi Lies, Lila salt, M/M, Marichat | Adrien Agreste as Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng, Marinette Dupain-Cheng Needs a Hug, Post-Episode: s03 Miracle Queen (The Battle of the Miraculous Part 2), Reveal, Scarecrow's Fear Toxin (DCU), There is no Damianette but Other People Think There is, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:20:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 26,917
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24411949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IAmWhelmed/pseuds/IAmWhelmed
Summary: Alternatively, *Ladybug Goes to Gotham (Not Willingly)The rise of Paris's favorite duo, Ladybug and Chat Noir, gains Batman's attention. Unfortunately for Ladybug-- and Marinette-- this leads to a series of events that find her on the floor of some warehouse in Gotham, dying as Scarecrow's fear toxin slowly seeps into her veins.Batman seeks to diminish the threat Ladybug and Chat Noir pose by reigning them in and training them. Marinette is unenthusiastic. With Chat Noir becoming distant, Adrien dating Kagami, and Lila stirring up trouble, she may find herself depending on The Batman and hissidekicksfor more than she anticipated. Meanwhile, Adrien and Alya are becoming increasingly worried about Marinette's odd behavior, and that means some secrets are going to find their way into the open.DISCONTINUED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Kagami Tsurugi, Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug, Alya Césaire/Nino Lahiffe, Jonathan Kent/Damian Wayne, Perceived but not actual Damian Wayne/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 56
Kudos: 287





	1. Karate Chops and Kwamis

She wasn’t sure how this happened.

She’d wandered away from the rest of the class, sure, just for a few minutes. Everyone just seemed so happy! Lila, true to being the succubus she was, had… a pretty singing voice. Delicate, smooth, alluring, like silk that drifted across the skin and left goosebumps in its wake. The class was enamored the moment she joined Luka as he strummed a slow tune on his guitar. She, herself, found Lila’s foxy voice to be almost lulling-- almost. Ivan and Mylene had taken to each other’s arms and swayed together, back-to-chest, Mylene leaning her head back so Ivan could lean his forehead forward and meet hers. Rose and Juleka seemed enamored, fawning over her like lambs looking for a guiding hand. The rest of the class just seemed lost to the music, nodding along with stars in their eyes and-- in Kim’s case-- lighters in hand. Despite all of that, despite the obvious god complex her friends were unintentionally perpetuating in their resident exchange student, she’d been enjoying herself.

She could focus on Luka’s guitar, after all, and the way he made eye contact with her across the deck of their boat, under the night stars and the twinkling bulb lights overhead. And with Lila singing, she couldn’t use that mouth of hers to tell any lies. Things had been good-- that moment was good.

She’d just turned her head at a bad time, caught Adrien’s hands on Kagami’s waist at the horribly right-wrong time. Swaying to and fro with her arms around his neck and her head on his chest. So she turned tail and parted her way through the sea of classmates, inching her way onto the street so she could breath for a second.

She’d decided to wander along the riverline when there’d been a hand over her mouth. An arm around her waist, taller, so that she felt her feet lift off the ground. Her stomach dropped, but she hardly felt it as the mystery grip tightened so hard she felt the air leave her lungs. She opened her mouth to bite or scream, but the hand stayed and pinched her skin and lips between their fingers.

But they’d picked the wrong girl.

She clenched her fist and raised her arm, just to slam her elbow as hard as possible into… their side? She wasn’t sure, but that arm around her bruised stomach lightened up, and she twisted around to return the favor. A kick to the stomach that usually made the akuma backpedal. The assailant, some guy in all black like a textbook creep, flew backwards and hit the ground. Unconscious, from the look of the white of his eyes. Sabrina was right inside, they could call her dad no problem-- but then Adrien and Kagami, locked in a slow dance flashed by her mind. No, everyone was inside, happy, lost to the music on their Saturday night. She’d take care of it herself. Rather, Ladybug would. She parted her bag to see Tikki’s big worried eyes staring up at her, blue and bright even in the dark of the parisian night. She reached in to give Tikki a small scratch on the head. “I’m fine, Tikki, don’t worry. Let’s get this guy to the police station, shall we?”

“I can take care of that.”

Her first thought was Chat, but that voice was too baritone and too serious, and carried a childish tone where Chat’s was merely boyish. Not familiar, and though the hairs on her arms stood on end, their tone betrayed no malice. She jumped, and found, to her surprise, a boy her age, dressed head to toe in color she’d seen before. On the news, in the papers, the heroes people talked about before Ladybug and Chat Noir made their way to Paris. Red, green, black, yellow. Eyes narrowed behind a perfectly-sculpted mask. His name eluded her. She snapped her bag shut and let out a meek “meep”.

His name was Robin, he’d… not so kindly reminded her, the sidekick of the greatest detective in the world-- Batman. And he was going to take this criminal to jail himself, whether she liked it or not. Well, she’d never been one to stand down, even against somebody like him. She was Ladybug! And now she was The Guardian. This was her city (and she didn’t want to be here on this boat right now) and her bad guy, and she was going to be the one to put him behind bars. She’d made a move to pick the dead weight of a guy off the ground. She didn’t stop to notice how fast Robin had circled behind her or his raised hand-- or to wonder why a hero from Gotham was in Paris in the first place. The next moment was darkness.

* * *

When she woke up-- she didn’t know how long she’d been out-- she was laid flat. Hard surface, one pillow. Voices a few feet away.

“--ian, you can’t just--!”

“--e’s fine. I didn’t do any damage, and this is what father--”

“--you’ve fucked up this time, Demon Brat.”

“--nough. Robin, she might have gone quietly if you’d spoken to her first.”

“--Tt--”

“Red Robin, she’s here now, and that’s what matters. Red Hood, did you get--?”

“Yeah, yeah, it’s right here, Bats.”

“Mm. Nightwing, report on Chat Noir?”

_ Chat _ . Her eyes had sprung open, but the lights had been blinding. Right in her face, hues of blues and yellow, starbursts of darkness as her eyes strained to pick up on her surroundings. She’d sat up and felt the splitting pain in her neck the moment she did. Her bag was still at her side, and she could still feel Tikki nestled into its inner lining. Across the room, which she’d eventually figure out to be the batcave, stood Red Hood, Red Robin, Robin, and Batman himself. A man in black had been standing somewhere off to the side, polishing what looked like a suit of old-fashioned armor. She’d frowned to herself, decided that this was NOT how she wanted to spend her Saturday night, and planned to make her big escape.

Seven minutes later, her escape plan, which had involved tossing one of the scalpels she’d found placed in a sterile medical kit to her bedside somewhere to the side to cause a distraction, ended abruptly when she’d climbed off the bed to crawl her way to the tunnel paved for the batmobile and ran directly into Nightwing himself. The plan, she now thought of with shame, would have failed anyway. After all, when she’d tried to back up, she’d hit Red Hood’s legs and met his inquisitive, almost-- no, definitely-- taunting look. Was that possible with his helmet? She’d seen inanimate objects do weirder in her time fighting akumas.

And that was where she was now, sitting back on that table with a bunch of bat-themed grown men surrounding her, watching her as if she’d try to escape again. They were right, of course, she was planning on it, but the sentiment was still insulting. She hung her head and tried not to make eye contact, because she’d heard some of the things these men had done, about the blood on Red Hood’s hands, criminal or no. About how every single one of these men have died and been resurrected by who knows what. She’d have to ask Tikki later how any of it was possible. She was Ladybug, yeah, but she and Chat had never gone toe-to-toe with somebody like Darkseid or The Joker. Hawkmoth was bad, horrible really, but he wasn’t… sick. He wasn’t demented. Didn’t kill people. He was cartoonish, wanted their miraculouses so he could make a wish, probably for world domination or something. Sure, maybe some of his akumas had some terrifying implications (icy blue eyes and snow white skin flashed by her mind’s eye), but he didn’t go around killing people. She supposed she should be thankful.

And she didn’t know why she was here. Because she’d mouthed off to Robin? She’d gladly do it again, and she doubted a world-renowned hero would be so petty.

Red Robin closed the mini fridge door. “Bro, did you eat my last Go-Gurt?”

Red Hood shrugged. “Wanna fight about it?”

They did, in fact, fight about it.

… Maybe she shouldn’t have been so sure. She reached down to her bag and felt Tikki soothingly brush against her hand. Things would be all right. She could handle this. “I didn’t think superheroes would be in the business of kidnapping teenage girls.”

Nightwing crossed his arms and shot Robin a scolding eyebrow raise. “We’re not.” Robin clicked his tongue and turned away. She wondered if they were the same age? He was shorter than Chat was, but his voice said he wasn’t Manon’s or Chris’s age. No, he was roughly Max’s height, so probably thirteen or fourteen at least, right? Nightwing leveled her with a smile, something comforting, the kind of smile she and Chat gave akumatized victims when they’d been purified. “We’re sorry about that. We promise there won’t be any karate chops to the neck when we take you back to Paris.”

Her heart skipped a beat. “Back to Paris? You mean…?”

Red Robin leaned against the medical cabinet, a very Chat Noir motion with his arms and legs crossed nonchalantly, a cool smirk on his masked face. “Welcome to Gotham.”

“No, oh no. No, I have to get back!” She reached into her bag to pull out her phone. “Alya will be looking for me, I--!”

“Relax.” Robin took what looked suspiciously like her phone out of his pocket and tossed it to her. “You might be an ametur, but I’m not.” So this was her phone, then. She hurriedly swiped it open and glanced at her messages.

**> Girl, where are you?**

_ <Went home. Headache. _

A little blunt to be her, headache or no (and she certainly was feeling one coming on right then), but it sufficed. Similar messages were sent intermittently to others, and there was even a message to her parents about her spending the night “elsewhere”. No doubt she’d be in trouble when Maman got a hold of her, but at least nobody thought she went missing-- or came to the correct conclusion of her getting kidnapped. She hummed disapprovingly and opened her bag to…. put…. her phone....  _ back _ . Her eyes widened in a moment, and she snapped her bag shut and swiped it behind her back. Robin snorted. “Please, I’ve already seen that creature of yours. Why do you think you’re here?”

Her heart stopped beating for a moment, and turned cold in the next as Batman himself brushed through his sidekicks to stand before her with a grave look on his face. His stature was overwhelming, a hulking mass that towered well above her, would tower well above Chat, too. She wondered if this was how his enemies felt, staring up at this man who felt more like an impending miasma. He stared down at her with a stone face and thin lips, eyes narrowed beneath his mask. “We know you’re Ladybug, and we know Chat Noir is--”

“No! Stop!” She covered her ears. “I don’t wanna know! It’s bad enough you all know our identities! How!” There it was, her Ladybug. She clenched her fists and glared up at Batman, because he had no idea  _ what he’d just done _ , what the  _ implications _ of him knowing meant for herself, and for Chat, for  _ Paris _ . “How did you find out!”

Batman stood resolute, unsurprised by the change in her, and more importantly unthreatened. She guessed the magic of Ladybug faded away when the mask came off to reveal Marinette. “That doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’re done.”

“What?”

He turned tail. He walked away from her like the conversation was over. The men around her seemed to wince, most of them with empathy. She guessed they’d all been there, too, as previous Robins. She leaped off the table, hands clutching at her bag because  _ if he thinks he’s going to take Tikki _ \-- “What do you mean I’m done? You are  _ not  _ the boss of me, and Paris is  _ not _ your city!”

“Maybe not,” he sat down at what she assumed was a super computer, or a bat computer, or whatever, and started typing. “But you’re not ready.”

Not ready? To be a superhero? Who did he think he was? She growled and pulled her bag closer, tugged it to her chest and took a step forward, only for Nightwing to branch out and stop her. She glared up at him, but found only sympathy in his masked eyes. She turned to Robin, who wasn’t looking at Batman, who seemed like he was tired of this conversation, like he’d heard it a million times before. Maybe he had? “Says the man who sends kids my age to fight his battles.”

She was right. Robin bristled, and Batman tensed up. “Robin is always with his brothers or under my command. You and Chat Noir answer to no one but yourselves, and that makes you dangerous.”

“Chat Noir and I would never use our powers for anything but good! We’re here to save Paris, not destroy it!” A broken moon and a wasteland of water, a tilted Eiffel Tower. She fought her urge to wince. “Hawkmoth--!”

“--Should be left to the adults. His abilities to manipulate emotions and turn a simple civilian into a monster are dangerous, but nothing The Justice League hasn’t seen before.” Except they hadn’t, not to public knowledge, anyway. Maybe they’d dealt with a monster or two, but she doubted any such creations before were so  _ miraculous _ .

“For the world’s greatest detective, you sure haven’t been paying attention.” She jutted a thumb to her chest. “I’m the only one who can purify the akuma that make his minions! You get rid of me--  _ and Chat _ \-- you make Hawkmoth a thousand times more powerful!” Because the akuma multiplied like mold on bread, and no alien green ring or golden rope or laser vision could put an end to the creation of a miraculous. Because she was Ladybug. Because she and Chat Noir were a team, and there’s no way some grown man in spandex was going to change that.

“Then we stop them at their source. We take down Hawkmoth himself.”

“Oh, and you know who he is too?” There was a silence, a very telling silence. Even he didn’t know who Paris’s personal supervillain was, which, checkmate, meant she had him right where she needed him. “Like I said, Chat and I are Paris’s only hope of--”

“No, the Black Cat miraculous and the Ladybug miraculous are Paris’s only hope of survival.” He stopped typing, didn’t turn around. “Which is why you’re going to give me yours.”

“In your dreams! I spent all year refusing to give  _ one _ old man in a winged costume my miraculous…”

Batman looked at her over his shoulder, paused for a moment. She blinked and hoped she imagined that the jerk had the audacity to smirk. “Red Hood?”

“Yeah, yeah.” The tallest of the sidekicks-- and until they stopped holding her hostage, that’s what they would be,  _ sidekicks _ \-- took something out of the messenger bag he’d kept at his side, something she hadn’t noticed. It was oddly shaped, and sort of clunky looking, with ornate designs. She squinted at it, and Red Hood stepped forward and brought it into the light. The Miracle Box. She sucked in a breath. “Look, girly, we got the rest of your jewelry set right here. Just be a doll and--”

“That is enough!” Red filled her line of sight, and she realized belatedly that Tikki had phased through her bag and sat stalwartly inches from her nose. “Maybe you’ve done your research on the miraculouses, maybe you even know who our holders are, but you most certainly did not do your research on  _ me _ !” The room fell silent, but there was the faint buzzing that came with tension in her ears. She could feel it in the way Nightwing stood straighter, in how Robin put his hands at his hilt. Batman himself turned around, leveled, calm, but even Marinette could see the clench of his jaw. Tikki seemed unbothered, and she briefly recognized that, as the kwami of the Ladybug miraculous, Tikki herself must have some Ladybug stubbornness in her. “Marinette is my Chosen, not because of her experience fighting crime, but because of her heart! I am Tikki, the God of Creation, and like every holder before her, Marinette is the only person I recognize as worthy! She will not give you her miraculous, and Plagg will reign earthquakes upon your city before Chat gives you his!”

“How do we know we can trust you?” Red Robin cocked his head, eyed Tikki with all the skepticism of a scientist eyeing down a theory. “We know somebody. Somebody with a beetle who gives him his powers. It was a struggle for him to keep his own body under control. How do we know--?”

“What is it with you humans and calling me an insect?”

Nightwing’s eyes widened, hands up in offense. “That’s not--!”

“I’m a kwami! Kwa-mi!” Tikki sighed, small arms hanging limply by her sides before she set them at her… hips? Did Tikki have hips? “We kwamis have always been a force for good in this world, and Nooroo has simply fallen into malicious hands! Whatever book you read about us from will tell you that.”

“Be that as it may,” Batman stood, cape bunching up in the air before it fell over him, and she thought for a brief unflattering moment that he looked like a kid in their favorite blanket, nothing at all like the threatening aura of a man that had shrouded her earlier. “Marinette is a child, as is Ad--” He caught himself, turned his head as his lips thinned. “Chat Noir.” He looked at her, rather than Tikki, at least it felt like it. “She’s untrained. Sloppy. She’s going to get herself hurt.”

“Then let’s train her.” Nightwing strutted forward, standing between with herself and Tikki on one side and Batman’s hulking figure on the other. “You said it yourself, Bats, she shows potential. If you think she’s not ready, why don’t you make her ready?”

“You said I show potential?”

He glowered. Later, Red Robin would tell her, that was how they all-- the batkids-- knew Nightwing had won.

“I won’t have the time--”

“Then I’ll train her!” Nightwing smiled, cocky, the second time one of these supermen had reminded her of Chat. It made her feel safe, despite the circumstances. “Hell, Hood and I could take turns.”

“Hell no.”

“Robin?”

“--Tt.”

“I’ll take that as a yes!”

Robin groaned and Red Robin snickered. Batman’s lips seemed to somehow grow thinner, as did the slits of his narrowed eyes. He turned around with an abrupt twist that made his cape lift dramatically. “Fine. Nightwing, take her home.” She squeaked and took a step back as he turned suddenly and approached her, hand outstretched with what was clearly a batarang. It blinked wildly up at her, red and small, but blinding. She winced. “Miss Dupain-Cheng, we’ll be in touch.” Despite every bit of her pride telling her not to, she took it.

“Hey, can somebody just blindfold me this time? If an akuma hits, I won’t be of much use concussed.”


	2. The Ambroise Amour: Part I

It wasn’t all bad, Tikki reassured her. Having allies was a good thing, especially allies with no miraculous for Hawkmoth to steal. Even if they knew their identities, Batman and his sidekicks resided in Gotham, so the risk of them getting akumatized and spilling their darkest secrets to the world was slim to none. They’d handed her the Miracle Box back and promised that they wouldn’t be taking it again, after all. And learning some proper self defense from them would make her and Chat all the more formidable. The problem, though, was that Marinette couldn’t decide whether or not she wanted to tell Chat.

Batman told her to bring him along next time, that they could come suited up and he’d provide whatever food needed to restore their kwamis for the trip home. But did she want that? She hardly wanted Batman or his gaggle of bat children to be keeping tabs on her in the first place. Besides, the thought of training with Chat, being so physically close, pinning him to the ground and getting pinned in turn-- she wasn’t sure she wanted that, either. Typically that would have been for  _ Chat-related _ reasons.

_ “Couldn’t wait to put your hands all over me, could ya, Bugaboo?” _

_ “Sorry, My Lady, you know I like being in control…” _

And maybe they still were Chat-related, because what was bothering her wasn’t that he’d take every opportunity to flirt and mess around,  _ but that he wouldn’t _ . Miracle Queen had admittedly changed a lot of things. Chat, to her extreme, totally-not-jealous displeasure, had taken to flirting with Ryuko so easily, so blatantly, that it still left her reeling, like some sort of emotional whiplash. Cats were renowned for catching tongues, but tying them? Sure, she had a lot of responsibility now, being The Guardian (though she’d done a poor job of it, apparently), but Chat seemed so… distant. She never thought that she’d miss his flirty little terms of endearment. “Bugaboo” and “My Lady” hadn’t been said in weeks, and if they had, they hadn’t reached her ears. It wasn’t like his personality had changed overnight, no. He still made puns at horrible times, was still cocky and charming, he was still her Kitty. It just felt like he wasn’t  _ her _ Kitty anymore. They’d pound fists and he’d be off with a small smile and a wave, and somehow it felt like something had come to an end.

There was no doubt in her mind that training with him wouldn’t just magically make him care about her again-- wait, care about her? Did he not anymore? Is that what she thought? That train left a bitter taste in her mouth, made her stomach churn uncomfortably. She preemptively covered her mouth to keep from throwing up all over her desk. He was her partner, her other half, and the thought of him being nothing more than a coworker felt like somebody had taken flaming hot coal and poured ice all over it in the pit of her chest. Could she take that, being in such close quarters with him as they threw each other about a training mat? Could she take seeing no glimmer in his eyes or grin tugging at his lips? No, no there was no way. Chat wouldn’t know about Batman.

“Marinette?” She glanced up to find Mme. Bustier, and by proxy the rest of the class, staring at her. “Are you feeling all right?”

“Yeah, girl, you’re looking a little like Snow White.” Alya leaned over and placed a hand that felt unsettlingly warm on her forehead. Adrien and Nino were turned in their seats, eyeing them with what she could only assume was concern, since she was sure looking at Adrien right then would unfasten whatever power she had over her stomach. “Miss Bustier, I think she needs to go to the nurse’s office!”

“Yes, please, Alya. Thank you.”

“I’ll take her!” She choked back the vomit rising at the back of her throat, and almost forgot the burn of it as Adrien stood and raised his hand. “I’m a few chapters ahead, anyway, Miss Bustier.”

“Thank you, Adrien.”

She wanted to object, and in fact, she tried to shoot Alya a pleading, suffering look, but Alya just smiled and shook her head.  _ You deserve some alone time with him, girl _ .

She could feel Lila’s cold, calculating glare as she left the room, slumped over Adrien’s shoulders like a wounded soldier. A few weeks ago, she would have been squealing and freaking out (and probably smelling his hair). Right then, she wanted nothing more than to see Chat, hear him call her “My Lady” and hold her hand. Adrien readjusted her so that her weight depended even more on him, shooting her a small smile that his big, green, worried eyes betrayed. “You’ve been a little off lately, Marinette. Are you sure you’re feeling okay?”

Off? Oh, yeah. She guessed what this must have looked like to all of them. She disappears from Juleka’s house, sends her friends short two-word text messages, and then gets to class on Monday and looks like she’s about to throw up-- which, in her defense, she was. “Mm, yeah. Just a little under the wing.”

“I think it’s  _ under the weather _ ?”

“Sure, that’s what I meant.”

Adrien was silent for a moment, and that cute little smile on his face turned to pursed lips. She turned her head and tried not to look at him, because butterflies in her stomach were the last thing she needed. How could he be so cute? How was he so handsome all the time? It was ridiculous. “You really worried us on Saturday, you know. You kinda just disappeared.” Was that… was that a disapproving tone? Was Adrien scolding her? “Chat Noir himself went out looking for you. He couldn’t find you anywhere, even at home.”

What? Really? Her heart skipped a beat-- for multiple reasons, really. “Yeah, sorry, I… I had a headache and I needed some air.”

“You told Alya you went home.”

She wasn’t imagining it. He was interrogating her. Her heart soared, cheeks burning like her mother had spent all night pinching them. He cared about her! Enough that he was getting upset! She cleared her throat and tried to squash that emotion down her chest. “I know, it’s not like me to lie, I’m sorry. I just… needed to be alone.”

“Why?” Adrien’s head whipped on her, and his nose was only inches away from brushing against the side of hers. His eyes were narrowed with so much concern, and whether he’d realized it or not, his arm had tightened around her hips. She blinked, and he squeaked and drew back. “Sorry, I just… if it’s about Lila, you can talk to me, you know?” Ah yes, Lila. Because, to be honest, that was her best excuse. He couldn’t know it was the way he and Kagami danced together, the way she’d wished it was her and how she’d had to fight back tears, how even though she’d given him up, it still hurt. Maybe she hadn’t minded Lila getting all that attention, because for once she’d actually earned it with a very real talent, but if Adrien thought that was why she left, she’d let him think that.

She shrugged. “I needed to get away for a little while, that’s all. I just didn’t want to be around everyone when she was the center of attention-- again.”

“You could have asked me and Kagami to come with you? We would have taken you to get ice cream in a heartbeat!” Oh she was sure they would have. If either of them thought for one second that she was upset, they’d have swept her somewhere else before she’d had time to blink; but being alone with them was the opposite of what she’d wanted. Being around him was hard enough. Watching them be discreetly cute together was a thousand times worse.

“I know, Adrien, it’s okay. I wanted to be alone for a little while.”

He gave her a smile, a small one, the kind he gave Chloe when she clung to his arm.

* * *

She was lying. The moment Marinette disappeared from that party, he and Alya were texting her, asking her where she was, if she was okay. Most of the class was unbothered, worried about her but not “freaking out” like Nino said he and Alya were. Kagami suggested that the four of them split and look for her. It was an hour in of that with no trace of her before he’d slipped away and transformed. Chat Noir could climb rooftops and get sky views of alleyways, and in the case that he found her backed into a corner by some men with knives, he could show them just how sharp a cat’s claws could be. He got a text from Marinette a little ways into a half an hour that read  _ not like Marinette _ . Short, two-word responses, and when he texted Alya about it, she told him she’d gotten the same thing, as had Nino and Kagami. _ Went home. Headache _ . Well, that couldn’t have been true, because he’d immediately set to her balcony and found that, not only was she not there, but her parents were waving for him to come inside.

“She was supposed to be home two hours ago, now! And when we texted her, all we got was this!” Tom handed his phone over to him, and he took it between clawed fingers and found, with growing unease, that the texts to her parents read the same way.

_ >Will be spending the night elsewhere. _

No pretense, no explanation, not even an apologetic text asking if it was okay. That was how his father texted, or how Nathalie told him he had another photoshoot after class; that was the least Marinette thing he’d ever read. It wasn’t her typing. “I’m gonna go look for her. Contact the police if she’s still missing by tomorrow morning.”

She wasn’t. He’d stopped by a few minutes before class, and Tom and Sabine told him with smiles, smiles that betrayed some hesitance, that they’d found her in bed this morning, fast asleep. She’d apologized profusely, told them she’d had a headache and went to go lay down at Alya’s. But there were a few things off there-- that he and Alya and Nino know she wasn’t at Alya’s, and she didn’t seem to have an excuse for why she’d left “Alya’s” in the middle of the night to come home. Pair that with her odd responses to his prodding as he’d carted her off to the nurse’s office-- nothing added up.

“Nothing adds up!” Alya huffed as he sat down, eyeing Marinette’s empty chair like she’d spawn out of its wooden seat and glean explanations. Adrien nodded, and Nino sighed and tilted his cap upwards.

“Maybe it’s like Marinette said? She just needed some time alone.”

“Then why didn’t she just say that? Think, Nino! Marinette has never been the type to lie before.” Why would she now? Adrien hummed and tapped his lips.

“Um, maybe…” The trio perked up as Lila inched into Marinette’s empty seat, looking pensive in posture, with her shoulders hunched and her legs squeezed together. Adrien raised an eyebrow. Troubled though she appeared, he could see the wily look in her eyes. Trouble was brewing, and he wondered if it had anything to do with Marinette’s Number One Fan. “...Maybe she was just feeling a little jealous?” Alya’s eyes widened, and he felt his eyebrow cocking. “You know, Adrien, you and Kagami were awfully romantic with each other on Saturday--”

“Hah, hah,  _ Lila _ !” Alya wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed, eyes narrowing in such a dangerous way that it made even Nino squirm. “Whatever do you mean?” One of her eyes twitched as she turned and brought Lila in to whisper conspiratorially between the barriers of Alya’s arm on either of Lila’s shoulders. What was being said, he wasn’t sure, but he and Nino exchanged looks, and Nino only shook his head.

“You see, Alya, what I meant was…” Lila patted Alya on the shoulder reassuringly as they pulled away, eyes still looking as calculating as her smirk, as though Alya had played right into her hands. Adrien wasn’t sure he was wrong. “Don’t you think Marinette disappearing for as long as she did would have been dangerous? She knows better than to go wandering around Paris at night, I think.”

“What’s your point, Lila?” Alya crossed her arms, nose scrunching under her raising glasses. Her crossed arms spoke of incredulity, and Adrien felt a similar sentiment.

“Well, what if she wasn’t alone? What if she saw Adrien and Kagami and felt… lonely?” She folded her manicured hands on Marinette’s side of the desk, shoulders lifting as she broke her unsure facade, fingers lacing together as though she were keeping a secret in the palms of her hands. “I guess what I’m saying is, what if Marinette was just missing her boyfriend?”

Adrien tilted his head. “Luka? He was right there, Lila. He didn’t leave the party until we did.”

She raised one finger to her lips and giggled. “Not Luka, silly! A Secret Boyfriend.”

“A Secret Boyfriend?” Alya snorted and rolled her eyes. “I appreciate the theory, Lila, but there’s no way she wouldn’t have told me.”

“Are you sure about that, Alya? She’s always been awfully secretive, hasn’t she? Sneaking off when akumas pop up, talking about  _ friends _ we’ve never met…”

His eyebrows knitted together as he shot her a dirty look. He’d already told her, Marinette was dear to him, and her implications were going to land her in a sea of trouble if this got out of hand-- he’d see to that. “Marinette likes Luka, Lila. There’s no way.”

Alya didn’t look so sure. She bit her lips and glanced at Nino, who cringed and gave her a half-armed shrug. She sighed. “Look, Lila, I’m sure if Marinette had a boyfriend, she’d tell me.”

And Adrien and Nino agreed with her.

At least, they would until a few weeks later.

* * *

She hitched a breath as Nightwing’s boot collided with her stomach in a move she hadn’t seen coming. He’d sent a flurry of moves her way, and though he was fast, she’d been Ladybug awhile, and fast was something that didn’t faze her. He’d feinted a left hook and she’d dodged, figured it was a set-up to hit her with the right instead. She’d been so sure that he’d go for a right swing, in fact, that she’d left herself open-- exactly what Batman would call a rookie mistake. The price was her flying across the training mat, rolling over the padded floor until she braced her arms and used her elbows to stop the wheeling. She grunted and pushed herself up, wishing she’d kept her Ladybug suit on. But, with Chat not here, Batman found no real reason for her to keep it on: “It’s a crutch. Learn to fight without it.”

He was right, but she wanted to spit.

“You’re already doing better, Buginette!” Nightwing smiled at her as he approached from the other end where he’d launched her, and the sight somehow made her hunched shoulders relax. “B was right! You have a lot of potential. You know how long it was before I could spot my first feint? Well, it was more than a few weeks in of training.”

She coughed and sat up, and he offered her a hand. She eyed it, and him, but took it nevertheless as she wiped the sweat from her cheek with the other. “I didn’t spot it, though.”

“Sure you did! You were just wrong about what I’d hit you with after.”

She huffed through her nose and smiled. She’d forgotten how it felt to be praised. Master Fu had seldom offered it, and though she heard it all the time as Marinette, it felt good to be recognized for her less-than-normal talents, too. Red Robin threw her a towel from the sidelines with a “Catch!” Nightwing caught the other that Robin threw and wrapped it around his neck. “I think that’s enough for the night. What do you guys say we pull up Netflix on the BatComputer and wait for B to get back?”

Red Robin cheered and Robin shrugged, though she could see a small smile on his face. She blinked and looked by Nightwing’s frame to the computer behind him. “Is that allowed?”

“Of course not! But while Batman is away, I’m the one in charge, and I say we need popcorn!”

She wondered what Chat would think of these guys. Grown men and a kid their age running around a city as dangerous at Gotham, with no powers as far as anybody knew. She wondered if he’d be just as suspicious as she was of them, if he’d feel more comfortable heckling them like they did each other. She imagined he would. Chat was always the talkative one, the one who’d make the first joke, who’d be coming up with quips and puns by the handful. She doubted these guys would have been able to keep up. She wondered if he’d slip into calling her Bugaboo again, if she’d feel safer with his arm around her shoulders and his chin on her head. He’d always been good at that, making her feel safe. That wasn’t to say that these guys made her feel on edge, or in danger per say, but she definitely didn’t feel like “one of them”. Their closeness made her almost long to have the rest of the miraculous holders together. Alya, Nino, Kim, Max, heck, she would even have taken Chloe right about then.

Red Robin and Nightwing pulled in chairs from the upstairs area she wasn’t allowed in, and Robin strutted down the stairs with armfuls of snacks-- popcorn, individually wrapped candy, chips, soda. They towered so high that she couldn’t see his face, and yet he kept down the stairs so easily. She’d have tripped and split her head open like that! Nightwing took a seat in Batman’s chair in front of the computer, Red Robin plopping down in the chair to his right. He looked her way and patted the empty chair on his left with a smile. Hesitantly, she sat down and watched as Robin came around behind her, grumbling as her threw the snacks before them. “I’m not an errand boy! Why couldn’t we have had Al--?” He cut himself off, glaring at nothing before he plopped down in the seat to her left and crossed his arms like a petulant child. “You’re not planning on eating all of this, are you, Nightwing?”

“Why not?” He reached forward and took a piece of popcorn, licking his lips as it passed to his tongue. He looked all the world like a cat with cream, and her internal Chat was having a field day.

“Because it’s unhealthy. The bricks of butter that go into the flavoring alone could clog your arteries and kill you, not to mention the sodium content.”

“Aw, Baby Bat, are you worried?”

“--Tt.”

Marinette giggled and took a few pieces of popcorn herself, popping them into her mouth and humming as the warm butter and salt mingled on her tongue. “What brand do you guys buy? Maman and Papa might like making it homemade, but I’m a little too busy for that.”

“Homemade too, actually.” Red Robin sipped at his soda and gave her a grin. “Can’t tell you our secrets, I’m afraid. It’s not the Batman Way.”

“And what is the Batman Way?”

Nightwing and Red Robin exchange contemplative looks. “Uh, something… something… responsibility.”

“Something, something... crime is bad.”

“Oh, I-I see…” Nightwing handed her a soda and she took it between nervous, twiddling hands and sipped at it like a preschooler with a sippy cup. “Do you guys do this a lot?”

“Nah, usually it’s upstairs with the rest of the family, but since identities are a thing…” Nightwing leaned forward and typed in the name of some movie he’d been apparently telling Red Robin about for months. “We’ll just have to hang down here, the four of us!”

_ You know what? _ Marinette settled into her seat, pulling her legs up to rest her chin on as the opening credits began to roll. She was fine with that.

* * *

The spot where Nightwing’s foot hit her was still sore the next morning, but it was fine. It would heal in a few days, as marks on her body had the last few weeks. The bruises didn’t hurt too bad, Nightwing was very careful not to hurt her. She could only feel them when she moved her body in a certain way too fast, when her flexibility reminded her that her skin still had its limits. Nothing she couldn’t handle.

What concerned her more was how tired she was. It’d been close to midnight by the time the movie was over, and Batman had still yet to roll up in his batmobile. She’d been fading fast by then, struggling to keep her eyes open as her body slunked, dead weight, into Robin’s. He’d made a noise of discontent and shifted away, but otherwise didn’t put up much of a fight. Nightwing had looked at her, at least she thought he did, with empathy and said he’d take her home for the evening. She didn’t remember a car ride home, but she did remember that they didn’t bother blindfolding her that time. When she woke up, she was still exhausted, but she was in her bed. So she was tired, and a little cranky, but it wasn’t anything she wasn’t used to as Ladybug. Late nights on patrol and hot chocolates with Chat always ended the same way. And besides, she wouldn’t be sitting in class all day, struggling to keep her head up. They were going on a field trip to a new art museum, the Ambroise Amour, the new home of art pieces centered around devotion, companionship, the idea of eternal love. She didn’t need to be well-rested to appreciate fine art. She was going to walk out of there with a million ideas for new designs, and even Lila couldn’t kill that fun!

She’d crowded onto the bus with the rest of her classmates, whispering and giggling with Alya as they took their seats. Adrien even got clearance from his father and Nathalie to come, since one of his father’s original works, modeled after his mother, had its own place in the museum. The ride consisted of Rose and Kim convincing everyone to sing a road song, a sentiment that was met with rolled eyes from Chloe and Alix, uncertain frowns from Max and Mylene, but excitement and willingness from pretty much everyone else.

All trip long: _Une souris verte_

_ Qui courait dans l’herbe _

_ Je l’attrape par la queue _

_ Je la montre à ces messieurs _

_ Ces messieurs me disent _

_ Trempez-la dans l’huile _

_ Trempez-la dans l’eau _

_ Ça fera un escargot _

_ Tout chaud _

When the crowd of students grew tired of this, Alix stood on her seat (to Mme. Bustier’s dismay) and crowed and roused the others to do their best rendition of 98 Bottles of Beer On The Wall (also to Mme. Bustier’s dismay). That carried on and on until the bus rolled around twenty minutes later to the museum. Their class all but shoved each other to head out the doors first, excited to go stretch their legs and have fun, rather than learn. The idea, of course, was that they take something away from the trip, but Mme. Bustier had no such fanciful imaginations. “Everyone, be back at the entrance in an hour so we can take the tour and head to lunch!”

“Yes Miss Bustier!”

It appeared they weren’t the only class lucky enough to find their way to the  Ambroise Amour on opening day. Classes from around the United Kingdom and even North America came bounding out of their respective buses, just as eager to spend the day doing nothing. To her surprise, there was even a class from Gotham Academy. She hadn’t meant to stare, but their uniforms! They were actually kind of fashionable. Stuffy, for sure, but she would have been excited to wear the pleated skirts and ties that came with the stuffy button-ups. Alya took her hand and Nino’s and dragged them away, Adrien in toe, before she could stare any longer, but not before a pair of deep green eyes spotted her.

* * *

“Is that it, Adrien?”

“Yeah…” He said it with such reverence. The four of them stared up at the mannequin sporting a dress fit for the gods. Gold, layered upon white, every seam and stitch so perfect that it didn’t need to be on a shapely mannequin to bestow a figure upon whatever it sat atop of. It looked Greek, like one of the ancient togas, but it glowed as if Apollo himself bestowed his power to it, or Aphrodite had blessed it with a magnetism no inanimate thing should possess. “Father sewed this back when he and Mother started dating. It was his first piece.”

Alya gasped. “Would you believe that?”

“No,” Marinette shook her head and tried to keep a hold of her awe, but her jaw was slack and words were failing her. “It’s so… perfect! You’re sure this is your dad’s first piece?”

“Yeah! He’s told me about it a few times. Mother even posed so he could fix it to her exact measurements! He told me she never wore it, but he’d see her trying it on sometimes.”

“Dude, why wouldn’t she wear it?”

Adrien smiled and rubbed at the back of his neck, eyes never leaving the ray of sun that seemed to sit just so between the shoulders of the dress. “She loved it too much to get it dirty. Father tried to convince her he’d just make her another one, but she wouldn’t let him.”

Her embarrassment and his relationship with Kagami notwithstanding, she found herself drawing closer to him, trying to soak in the very sunlight he hadn’t seemed to realize was reflected in that smile of his. She nearly set her head on his shoulder, but she reminded herself that this was Adrien and not Chat, and set her hand there instead. He startled and looked at her, but then the smile drifted back, and though he turned back to look at the dress, he set his hand on hers and squeezed it.

* * *

From there they moved onto other works of clothing that were created with a muse in mind, pieces by Hubert de Givenchy who thought of Audrey Hepburn, Alessandro Michele pieces inspired by his mother, even dresses inspired by strangers touched by the far-reaching hand of disease. And still they had another twenty minutes before they had to meet back at the front for the tour. The buttered popcorn from the night before was seldom helpful eight hours following consumption, and she was getting peckish. They’d stopped to take a break, with Adrien and Nino headed to the restroom, and Alya off to grab drinks from the vending machine. She’d stayed back to keep their seats at the cushy bench they’d found large enough to fit all four of them, and took advantage of the moment to whip out her sketchbook and work on some designs before the ideas left her. She took a moment to swipe one of her macarons from her purse. She’d brought more than one, just in case, for Tikki, who was fast asleep anyway, nestled into the soft fabric of her bag. She smiled and scratched her head with a finger, humming with affection when Tikki’s sleeping kwami body responded to the touch with a small yawn.

She took a bite of her macaron, savoring the way the dark chocolate mouse in the middle melded with the taste of lavender and lifted her spirits. If she wasn’t in a good mood before, she certainly was then.

“The amount of sugar packed into those could send an infant on a tirade for hours.”

She nearly choked at the sudden voice, and patted her chest with her fist to get the loose crumbs to go down. “Sorry?”

“Don’t apologize, it’s your body, after all. And don’t speak with your mouth full.”

She took one last bite, almost in rebellion, and swallowed. The stranger standing before her wore one of the Gotham Academy uniforms she’d been admiring earlier, and had a rigidness about him that made her almost wince. She got a better look at his face as he came around; his eyes were green like Adrien’s, but darker, more like a forest where Adrien’s eyes were shining emeralds. His hair was just as dark, and sharp, like the ponged ends of a trident. He was her height, she surmised from her second look at him, meaning he was either a little younger, or he was a little short for his age. She fixed him with a small smile. “I don’t believe we’ve met?”

“You’d be correct.” He extended a hand, pointedly, eyes daring her to make the wrong move despite the fact that she was very willing to shake his hand, and didn’t need a threat. She took it and shook once. “Damian Wayne.” Damian Wayne? Son of Bruce Wayne? Brother of Timothy Drake Wayne? She swallowed, hard.

“M-My name is--!”

“Marinette Dupain-Cheng, I am aware.”

She blinked. “How?”

The kid hardly flinched. “The reputation of your parents precedes you. Their bakery is well known among high-society in Gotham.”

But that didn’t explain how he knew her name, specifically. Unless… “Are you… looking to place an order?”

His nose scrunched. “No. Unlike my brothers, I have no such  _ sweet tooth _ .” He said sweet tooth like he’d only heard it once or twice. He glanced down at her lap, where her sketchbook was open. His eyebrows raised. “You are an artist.”

Undeterred by her growing need to defend her pride, her cheeks bloomed in pink. “I’m a designer, actually.”

Damian took a seat next to her. “May I see?”

She glanced down at her hands and her book, pensive, but found her gaze drawn to his. They were scratched and had a few blisters, sure, which was concerning for a rich boy, but what got her attention were his fingernails. Under them, she could see ink and paint, and the side of his hand where the pinkie sat was covered in lead-- he, too, was an artist. She shrugged and slid it over. He took the book in his hands and flipped off the page where she’d yet to draw anything but the outline of a woman, took a few moments to find a design he settled on. “This one. What inspired it?”

She glanced over his shoulder to see the ball gown she’d sketched up. She doubted she’d have a chance to make that thing, let alone wear it, but she adored the design nevertheless, and hoped that one day, when she started her own boutique, she could bring that dress and all its layers and ruffles to life. “Oh, you know, just one too many princess movies, hah hah!” She waved it off.

Damian hummed. “It’s nice. Regal, but innocent nevertheless. You’d turn heads entering a room in this.”

She blushed. “O-Oh, really? You think?”

He flipped to another design. “And what of this one?”

“Oh, that was after my friend Alya and I spent a whole night baking a cake for our friend Mylene’s birthday! We tried to carry a new bag of flour from my dad’s shop upstairs and broke it. It made a huge mess and we were finding flour in our hair for days, but the silhouette was nice!”

“Marinette?” They glanced up to find that her friends had returned, Alya with a soda in each hand, Nino and Adrien with their already open and half-empty. Alya seemed skeptical of Damian’s presence, almost as though it were Chloe sitting there-- which, to paint a picture, meant her hip was out and her eyebrow was raised, and the lips were ready to speak some harsh words if she needed to. “Who is this?” Adrien and Nino stood on either side of her, looking confused.

“Hey, guys! Welcome back! This is Damian Wayne.”

Adrien’s eyes lit up. “Damian Wayne? As in Bruce Wayne’s son? My father has told me a lot about you. My name is--” He stepped forward and offered a hand to shake, which Damian eyed momentarily before shaking.

“Adrien Agreste, son of Gabriel Agreste. I could say the same of you.” He glanced between Adrien and Marinette, and she felt herself straightening because  _ what was that about _ ? “I’d like to join your cavalry for the evening, if you’ll allow me.”

Nino raised the bridge of his cap. “Cavalry?”

Adrien glanced over Damian’s shoulder at Marinette, visibly seeking approval. She shrugged her shoulders.  _ Don’t look at me! I have no idea!  _ “Uh, sure! I don’t see why not?”

* * *

Damian tagged along with them, and stiff as he may have been, she’d actually started to have fun. He was able to provide some commentary on the paintings they passed, spouting off facts about the artist the description below each piece didn’t detail.

“This piece was both a romantic gift and the result of the taxing political landscape of the 18th century, which you can observe from the subtle commentary on the crown. Look at the way the hall is decked in gold and red, but the banisters and their dresses are torn.”

“Coombs painted this on his honeymoon with his wife, who is represented by the single lily you see in the pond outside the cabin window. It was her favorite, I’ve read. It’s unfortunate that she passed only a few months after their wedding. I wonder if his corresponding piece is here as well? Though it may be a little drab for a museum with such an uplifting atmosphere.”

“Mac An Aba painted this for his mistress, who at the time was carrying the only child he ever sired. No need to look so disgusted, a mistress was common in this time period for men of wealth. After all, the idea was that the mistress did for the man what he would never disrespect his wife enough to ask. Oftentimes the mistress was seen by his wife as a friend, rather than competition.”

She wondered if the actual tour would be half as captivating. Damian appeared to know every painting, every sculpture, and would spare them no detail he’d read. He’d garnered a few low whistles from Nino, and more than a few gasps from herself. Alya seemed less inclined to swoon at the beauty of the art, even seemed a little annoyed. Her eyes kept drifting from herself to Damian, how they were standing next to each other. She mentioned it a few times in whispers, even tried to not-so-subtly booty-bump her into Adrien, who seemed startled by the sudden invasion of his space. She giggled up at him, and he smiled down at her. It was like Alya was trying to remind her of her crush, which was the exact opposite of what she wanted. Adrien liked Kagami, that was okay (maybe not okay, but it was how it would be), she’d live with it-- but it would be a heck of a lot easier if Alya would stop nudging. Usually, it was appreciated, Alya got her out of her comfort zone. In this specific situation, though…

Alya linked her arm around Marinette’s and pulled her away from Damian’s unbothered side. “Alya, what the--?”

“Girl, do you know him?”

“Know him? Why would I--?”

“You’ve just been getting real comfortable with this Wayne guy,” Alya squinted at her the way a detective squints at the suspect of an interrogation “Almost like you already knew him...” Marinette blinked, because clearly she didn’t. Damian lived in Gotham. As far as she knew, her parents had never even fulfilled a catering order from the Waynes, let alone knew them personally. Now that she thought of it, they’d never even had any orders from Gotham. How would their name be familiar to anybody from Gotham’s elite? Wasn’t it a little suspicious that this random kid from Gotham knew her name and decided to spend his day with  _ them _ and not his own classmates? This guy was handsome, rich, and maybe a little cold, but he was polite. He had to be popular, right? So then why…

Unless she  _ did _ know him.

She frowned and said, with a glance at Damian’s back, “Maybe I was meant to.”

Alya blanched, eyes wide as Marinette pulled away from her side and caught up to Damian, tapping at his shoulder. Nino fell back so he could walk beside her, Adrien obliviously glancing around with wide eyes at all the sculptures Damian was yet to stop them with an informational bit about. “Hey, you figure out what’s up with this Dami guy and Marinette?”

Alya said nothing for a moment, jaw hanging open uselessly as she and Nino followed after their group. A particular darkness seemed to fall over her as her wide eyes turned narrow, brows knitting in incredulity. “I think Lila might have been onto something…”

Nino gulped.

* * *

The class rejoined at the front entrance fifteen minutes later, and Damian joined them without a word. When asked, he’d shrug. “My father is responsible for this field trip in its entirety. Should there be question of my place, I’ll simply remind them of that.”  _ Them _ being the teachers Adrien had asked Damian about, be they Mme. Bustier or his own chapureon. It appeared nobody batted an eye at the extra kid, save for the kids themselves who were starry-eyed at the Wayne Kid who’d temporarily become  _ one of them _ . Once the hype died down, the tour could continue as planned. Damian took to Marinette’s side like white on rice, but seemed to keep Adrien in eyesight, as well. Why, she wasn’t sure, but she was more concerned with gathering support for the running theory she’d been concocting the last quarter of an hour. This, admittedly, would be easier with Damian close, even if Alya seemed to be giving him the Alya Death Stare, usually reserved for her sisters, but used in special occasions that amassed her hostility. Why Damian was deserving, she wasn’t so sure, but that was a mystery for later.

“And here we have a Ramsey piece. Painted in the 18th century and uncovered in the mid 1900’s.” The tour guide, a tall, lanky man with messy red hair and freckles for days, gestured to the large framed portrait on the wall. “Ramsey’s muse was his lover…”

“Wrong,” Damian hissed in a hush to her. “Ramsey’s muse was his sister, who bore similar physical characteristics to his lover, true, but her presence in his art was a ruse to disguise that his affections lied with a man.”

She leaned closer so he could hear her better, to draw less attention. “It sounds like you know something about that.”

Damian’s nose scrunched. “I’m afraid I miss what you are implying, Dupain-Cheng.”

“Marinette is fine.” She eyed him, watched the way his cheeks turned the very slightest shade of pink. “I meant that it sounds like your siblings are important to you. Say, Damian, do you have any others? Is Tim Drake your only brother?”

That got his attention. He cocked an eyebrow at her, lip curling in what she guessed was a sneer. “I assumed my father’s habits of picking up strays were common knowledge.”

“Strays?”

“Tim is far from his first orphan. I suppose you wouldn’t know.”

“So there are others?”

Damian turned away and shrugged, as though the tour guide, who he’d clearly thought was doing a horrible job, had suddenly captivated him with erroneous knowledge. “My brother, Dick Grayson, was his first. The son of two acrobats who met an untimely end.”

She shifted, shoulders sagging as a very sudden weight fell over her. “I’m-- I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. He’s… happy.”

Even so, that had to have been hard. She couldn’t fathom losing her parents, could hardly think of it without pushing the thought away as soon as possible. It wasn’t a pain she was capable of imagining. It was why she felt for Adrien, why his sad smile always broke her heart right at its center. “So,” she regathered herself. “You have two brothers?”

“Three. There was one after Dick. Jason. He’s not home often. He likes to keep his distance.”

“Your dad adopted him, too?”

“As I said, he has a habit of picking up strays.”

She nodded. Bruce Wayne, she supposed, was a kind soul, one with sympathy. She’d heard about his parents from her parents, knew he himself had been left alone by a sudden, unplanned twist of fate. She could only guess that he’d seen some of himself in a bunch of kids with nowhere to go, no family to lean on. Quite frankly, she wished  _ he _ was Batman. Maybe then she’d be getting a little less flack for being inexperienced, or having an MIA master. She might not have been a “stray” as Damian put it, but she sure felt like one. Things had gotten a lot heavier with her new role as The Guardian. She’d always had him to turn to, to ask questions when the world seemed to be crashing down on her, when it felt like even she and Chat Noir couldn’t weather what was coming. Now that he was gone, it felt like the safety net had been ripped from under her. The only person who understood what she and Chat Noir were going through, the only person who could tell them about the miraculouses, about what things were like before, about what each user before her was like and what they did. It felt like a huge part of history, a piece of a puzzle, had been torn and burned. Mostly, it felt like she was walking across a tightrope with a partner still on land, and there was nobody to catch her if she took a wrong step. She shook her head. “Are you not adopted, too?”

“Of course not! I’m his one and only blood son. I am his legacy.”

Well, that was an awful lot to think about. She wondered if Adrien felt the same?

* * *

Lunch came sooner than she could have hoped, and her stomach did a topsy turn under her chest with delight. The cafeteria was big, and welcoming, and she’d all but rushed to grab her tray. Nino and Alya were right behind her, grabbing their trays and chatting as they inched down the line. Damian had disappeared somewhere in the crowd of Gotham kids, probably to grab a “rich kid” lunch from the teacher. Chloe, for all her worth, was pitching a fit to Sabrina about eating cafeteria food. Adrien joined them on Nino’s end, and they smiled at each other.

“Oh, Marinette! I see you’ve met Damian.” Oh, no. She hoped she imagined the voice, but the smile on Alya’s face and the frown on Adrien’s told her it was very real, and it was exactly who she thought it was. She turned to find Lila standing there with a cheshire grin and eyes that gleamed with delight and derision. “You know, his father is a good friend of mine. I’m afraid I’m not acquainted with Damian myself, but his father has been telling me stories about a special girl Damian’s been paying a little extra attention to!” Her tray was already full of food, and she strayed to Marinette’s side where the space was empty, but stood out of line. She’d probably made some excuse that got her to the cafeteria earlier than everyone else, not that it mattered. As long as the food was still hot, which the spaghetti the lunch lady poured on her plate seemed to support with its share of steam, she’d brush off Lila’s obvious little manipulations. She and Adrien knew, and that’s what mattered.

Alya seemed to have a differing opinion, though, shifting her eyes as if bothered by Lila’s presence. She’d been happy to greet her just a moment ago. “Oh? Would you happen to know who she is?”

“Oh,” Lila grinned. “I was actually wondering if that girl was you, Marinette.”

Alya tensed, and even Adrien’s ears seemed to turn some shade of red. He blinked, and squinted at nothing, looking confused and more than a little unsettled. Marinette rolled her eyes. “Oh, please, Lila. I hardly know the guy.”  _ Just met him today, actually… unless I’m right _ .

“Really? Because it looked like you were getting awfully cozy with him on that bench.”

She scoffed and went to pass by, but wasn’t expecting Lila to be as forward as to stick her heel out for her to trip over, and trip she did. Her arms flew out with the tray and sent it flying upwards, but her body went flying forward. It all happened so fast, fast enough even her Ladybug instincts couldn’t save her from the fall. Alya screeched and Adrien rushed to catch her, but she knew that wouldn’t be enough to save her from the brunt of this.

And yet, in the next moment, she was safe, bent forward and held up only by the arm that had bent upwards around her chest. Her legs quivered, but the arm stayed put, despite the fact that all of her weight was resting on it right then. “I assure you, there is no such girl.” She glanced up and found Damian, standing straight with her in one arm and her tray in his free hand, eyes so cool and calm that the absence of heated scorn almost made the room frosty. “And  _ my father has no friends _ .”

Adrien seemed stuck, paused in time between where he’d been in line and where his legs had moved to reach for her. Relief flooded his face, but there was shock in equal measure, with a third emotion that felt green riling under the surface of his sunny face. Alya had turned frigid, eyes locked to the arm that held Marinette upright, eyes thick with a blank, callous dubiosity that had Nino stiffening in preparation for damage control. Lila, Marinette found upon turning her head enough to look at her, appeared strangely amused. Damian had essentially accused her of, well, the usual-- lying, and she wasn’t batting an eye. Usually there was a trace of malice there, the look that said “You’ll regret that”, but there was nothing but alarming glee. “Oh? Perhaps I was thinking of somebody else, then…”

“Perhaps you were.”

He tugged her closer in a gesture meant to help her stand, and she straightened up with a huff. “Thanks.” He said nothing, just passed her the tray and scrutinized Lila with those icy eyes of his.

None of them saw the purple butterfly flit into the cafeteria, not until it had already landed on a pair of glasses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to remind everyone before the hypothetical comments start that
> 
> A.) I am a firm Adrienette and a slightly-lesser-firm-but-still-pretty-damn-firm DamiJon shipper.
> 
> B.) There will be no Alya or Adrien salt in the comments. I will delete it. Fair criticism of the character in regards to my work is one thing, but I will not have the comments filled with salt from people who hate her or Adrien in canon. That said, if you think I have written somebody out of character, or have complaints about my execution, I strongly encourage you to give it to me lol


	3. The Ambroise Amour: Part II

_ “Hypno-Harpy… your friend is keeping secrets from you! I give you the power to find who this boy really is to her, and in exchange, bring me Ladybug and Chat Noir’s miraculous!” _

“Yes, Hawkmoth…”

Well, this was not how Marinette had anticipated her day going. Sure, she was sleepy, and a little bruised and sore, but that didn’t mean anything. She was going to go on her class field trip, hang out with her friends, come up with some inspired designs. Sure, she’d anticipated dodging some less-than-subtle manipulation attempts from Lila, maybe tripping a few times (unrelated), or getting lost in the vastness of the museum ( _ possibly _ unrelated). She’d even been looking forward to hanging out with Adrien, getting a word or two in with him between her unhelpful stuttering, asking him how he and Kagami were doing-- okay maybe that specific part she hadn’t actually been looking forward to, but talking to Adrien was nice! But alas, despite the fact that the Ladybug earrings were snug on her ears, the very symbol of good luck, she found that the field trip had gone wrong in a number of varying ways. Damian Wayne had shown up out of the clear blue, garnered her suspicion, and made her wonder if Batman would go so far as to spy on her. That was fine, she could use that as leverage to, hopefully, get rid of him, or at least loosen his surveillance of her. What was less fine was how Alya had-- rather than spending the day hanging off her arm, pulling her to and fro as they giggled and gasped at the provocative works of a bygone period-- almost immediately formed some sort of animosity towards Damian, which had somehow, by no blamelessness on Lila’s part, of that she was sure, gestated into the akumatization of Hypno-Harpy. “MARINETTE!!!”

This akuma, some weird, much taller version of her friend, appeared as though she’d been ripped straight out of some mythology book, or an American 80s cartoon. Large bat wings spanning twice Alya’s width on either side, purple skin with neon green eyes that, as evidenced by the wandering aimless zombies that roamed the many halls of the museum, entranced victims into restlessly spouting all of their deepest secrets. Alya’s plaid shirt had turned into a high-hipped one piece that was pitch black, which matched her fiery-hair-turned-coal, twisted into tight pigtails that sat low on her neck, yet twisted into half-moons so the split ends stuck face-up. Her hands were ghoulish claws that resembled eagle feet, tan and huge. She could probably do a hand-stand and walk on those if she wanted to.

It happened quickly. Alya had been akumatized. Damian took her by the waist and hauled her like luggage under his arm, leaping over tables, dodging the claws that Hypno-Harpy could  _ apparently fire like freaking bullets from her eagle talons _ . She didn’t see where Adrien and Nino went, but she’d seen Adrien grab him by the shoulder and drag him away. Marinette inhaled as Hypno-Harpy lost sight of them, turned and grabbed some poor Gotham Academy student who had been too scared to move and looked deep into her hypnotic green eyes. “We’ll head to the second floor, the balcony above is an excellent vantage point.” Not that she could have done anything to argue with him, what with her lungs being used as punching bags every time he jumped and socked the breath out of her. She supposed there was a bright side to this-- first, of course, being that she knew exactly where the akuma was, the black glasses that still sat neat on Hypno-Harpy’s face. Second, of course, Marinette glanced at Damian over her shoulder, was that Damian had confirmed her suspicions for her-- this boy was Robin. No regular kid could move the way he had, or, she thought as he took a running head-start for the pillar attached to both the first and second floor and lunged, climb a smooth piling with his bare hands to get to the second floor. Heck, a regular kid would have  _ used the stairs _ ! Who else but the Boy Wonder would have decided that scaling a post was  _ faster  _ than  _ the stairs _ ? Damian soon hitched her over the fencing of the second floor balcony and climbed to the other side himself. Her butt hit the floor with a huff, and she rubbed it as she glared at him. He’d been, right, though. The second floor balcony was an excellent vantage point. It overlooked the bottom floor in an almost complete circle, like an opera where they overlooked the theater. Excellent place for a trap.

Marineete glanced around, just to be sure she and Damian were alone. “I’m gonna need to--”

“Get to a safer place, Princess.”

“AAAAH!”

She jumped. Damian raised an eyebrow. Chat Noir sat behind her, crouched on his staff like a cat ready to pounce, grin inching across his face. “I guess I should be thanking you, Mister Wayne. Usually I’m the one who scoops her out of trouble.” Marinette scoffed. That was only because he didn’t know she was Ladybug, though she supposed without that information, she looked a lot like a danger-prone, hero-obsessed civilian. Maybe he assumed Alya had rubbed off on her? Chat looked to Marinette, eyes softening as he retracted his staff, then came to a stand at the floor. “What is it this time Princess?  _ Purr _ haps,” he glanced to Damian, quirking one eyebrow, but his eyes had narrowed. There was something in them that she couldn’t read. It was borderline antagonistic, something she was sure Damian had picked up on. “You’ve been keeping a torrid love affair secret?”

She blanched, and Damian scoffed. “Are you daft?”

Chat shrugged, ghost of animosity in his eyes under the levity and playful twinkle that ushered in, with a hint of satisfaction. “Hey, had to ask! Marinette is obviously the akuma’s target, I’m just trying to figure out why.”

She hummed. An animosity towards Damian, spurred on by Lila-- could it be? “You might not be that far off the mark, Chat. Alya’s been acting weird around Damian all day. Lila is involved somehow, I’m sure of it. What if she’s convinced Alya I’m hiding some, as you put it,  _ torrid love affair _ ?” She gestured that last part with air quotes. “That would explain why she’s after me.”

Chat seemed unfazed, as though he’d already come to this conclusion, himself. “That means I should get you two to a safer place!” She gasped as his arm suddenly wrapped around her waist and pulled her into him, something that might not have been so daunting had he still acted this way with Ladybug. The excuse to get her close, to have her hands on his chest as she peeked up at him from under his chin-- the way he looked down at her, as he was doing right then, with an almost fleshly smirk, and a wink. In fact, it was though the Chat from before Miracle Queen had been ramped up one or two decibels, like he had something to prove. Her cheeks reddened, and her arm turned to very sudden, very inconvenient jello at her side.

“I-I-bu--wha--?” Stuttering? Oh no! Why was she stuttering? This was Chat, Chat!

Chat glanced at Damian and nodded to get closer. “Get on my back.”

Damian scoffed, again. “You can’t be serious.”

“I’ve carried bigger than you on my back, kid.”

Damian’s stony face remained the impeccable picture of disinterest, aside from the miniscule twitch in his eye. “I believe we are the same age, Chat Noir.”

Chat glanced him up and down. “I dunno, you look like you’ve got a few inches to grow before your my age.”

Damian’s face twisted, and she pushed away from Chat’s arms (despite a growing urge to hold tighter). “Enough! Chat Noir, you have an akuma to catch! You don’t have time to waste bickering with a civilian!” Who isn’t actually a normal civilian, but he didn’t need to know that. Damian made a noise with his teeth, a familiar one she’d heard from Robin a great number of times. Chat, on the other hand, smiled all cheeky and pulled her in again.

“You’re right, Princess. C’mon, Kid Who’s My Age, let’s get you somewhere safe!”

* * *

_ Somewhere safe _ turned out to be an unoccupied room, yet to be filled with an exhibit. Damian jumped off his back with a grunt and a glower. Her stomach churned as Chat’s leather arms tightened around her before he set her down. “Stay here until you hear the usual. You know,  _ Miraculous Ladybug _ !”

“Does she really say that?” Damian’s voice, steeped in mirth, was nothing compared to the glare she could very plainly see him giving her. She had half the mind to glare right back at him.

“Well, I’ll be off, then!” Chat turned around, but paused and glanced at her over his shoulder. She blinked at him and tilted her head in question, to which he smiled and shook his. “You know, Marinette, your friends are there for you to lean on. You don’t have to keep everything to yourself.”

What? Her heart skipped, and she wasn’t sure why. In the next moment, Chat was gone, and she stood without him in an empty ballroom with Damian a few feet away. He was glaring out the window at the roads down below, the courtyard that greeted every guest filled with wandering bodies and hiding kids. Hypno-Harpy had already done a number on the Ambroise Amour, but it was nothing that couldn’t be undone. She grimaced and glanced at her untalkative companion, whose green eyes had taken to looking anywhere but her. “It would be advantageous for me to find a spot in the next room. Hiding in the same spot is going to do nothing but doom us both. I don’t know about you, Dupain-Cheng, but I’m not a fan of hypnosis.”

“Don’t bother, I’ll leave this hiding spot to you, Damian! Tikki, Spots on!”

There was a strangled gasp as red magic flamed and overtook her, leaving Ladybug where Marinette stood seconds before. Damian’s eye twitched again, not in shock that she was a superhero, no, she knew better. That was shock that she’d transformed in front of him. She smirked and reared her yoyo to swing away. “Don’t worry, I don’t make it a habit of transforming in front of civilians. Then again, you’re not actually a civilian, are you, Boy Wonder?” She shot him a wink, and then she was off.

Damian stood there for a few more moments, watching as red and black disappeared over the second floor rails.

“--tt.”

* * *

“Evening, Ladybug!”

Ladybug, not My Lady. She hid the wince as she landed beside him. “Hypno-Harpy, huh?”

Chat nodded, cheeky grin as he watched two victims walk right into each other before they fell flat on their backs, mumbling secrets at the ceiling above with no ear to listen. “Yep, a little miscommunication, is all. The akuma is in her glasses.” He stood and she watched as he nodded towards the first floor, where there were still screams of students-- a good indicator of where the akuma probably was. “Shall we?” She smiled.

* * *

This was not how this was supposed to go. She’d planted the seed of doubt only a few weeks back, per both Hawkmoth’s orders to stir-- er, something, or someone-- up, and her own desire to see one of Marinette’s most loyal, stagnant supporters turn against her. Alya had always been a tough one. She bought her lies on the regular, of course, she was as impressionable as any of the other idiots at Dupont. Everybody had a price, something they wanted, and she could make those promises because people read like open books with black ink on pale paper. Kim and Alix wanted to meet big sports stars, daredevils, masters of the physical arts. Nino wanted to meet the biggest names in music and the directors of their music videos. Alya, as strong as she thought she was, could be won by the simple promise of an interview. All she had to do was drop Ladybug’s name, or whisper in her ear about a story with juicy little details, and Alya was at beck and call. When it came to Marinette, however, Alya had played the part of a nasty little thorn in her side. She’d believed in Marinette when she’d gotten her expelled, had even sought to clear her name. And on that field trip, the one that ended with their train through the foundation of Big Ben, she’d stopped her from just about tearing Marinette out of Adrien’s arms. Asleep or wide awake, that girl had no business sticking her head on Adrien’s sleeping body. If she wanted to truly ruin Marinette Dupain-Cheng, then Alya was the stone wall between her and victory that needed to be taken down.

Marinette’s odd behavior as of recent had been an excellent opening. Disappearing from the party, falling asleep in class, keeping secrets from her friends? She wasn’t sure what Marinette was hiding, and she didn’t really care. But she could spin it. A secret boyfriend, some steamy romance Marinette was hiding for one reason or another-- well, if she kept up the nausea she was sporting a few weeks ago, she could think of a few reasons she’d keep a boy a secret-- and a mystery for Alya to sink her teeth into. Then, things had played so deliciously into her hands that she’d nearly lost her cool with excitement. Damian Wayne shows up, is clearly smitten with Marinette (why, she had no idea),  _ and _ by proxy earns the suspicion of Alya, enough to use it. She suspected that he’d known, of course, that he’d played right into her hands by catching Marinette. Honestly, she’d been hoping he’d be too weak to catch her and they’d fall into an embarrassing heap together on the floor, the way a teen drama would set up a thriving, wild romance. Him catching Marinette, though, then eyeing her up and down and undressing her motives with those keen eyes of his, that was just as effective. She could have done, of course, without the sheer  _ jealousy _ that was resultantly written in big jade letters over Adrien’s handsome face, but he would be a different enemy to conquer altogether. No, her current war was waged against the baker’s daughter with some sad little big dreams, and her war chief had been akumatized.

She’d not only turned Alya against Marinette once and for all, but she’d done Hawkmoth a solid, and she was sure his favor in return would be most profitable. She’d gotten away the moment Hypno-Harpy had laid her sickeningly bright eyes on Marinette and Damian, found herself a nice little hiding place between two exhibits in glass where she could blend into the crevice and wait. She’d wait until the akuma either won or was purified, then come out and give Alya support while Marinette undoubtedly kept whatever her  _ real _ secret was closely guarded. It was perfect!

_ Was _ .

What she hadn’t anticipated was Hypno-Harpy chasing a terrified Gotham Academy student into the same room, or charging the student so close to her hiding place that, when the akuma pinned the student to the ground and hypnotized them with her soulless eyes, she herself would be in plain view. She’d curled into herself and tried to make her proverbial hit box as small as possible, but it hadn’t been enough. As soon as the snooty little Gotham kid laid there with pale skin, mumbling about how they’d bullied the spirit out of some other kid bad enough that they’d moved to a whole other city, Hypno-Harpy had turned her eyes on her.

“So many secrets in your eyes, I can see them!”

“N-No, I-I’m an open book, really!”

She swallowed hard as one of Hypno-Harpy’s claws tightened around her throat. It was hard to breath, hard to speak. She hung a foot off the ground like a snake with no feet to reach, dangling helplessly by the hand that she’d bitten. Hypno-Harpy’s eyes narrowed on her, face inching closer, so slowly it felt like every centimeter was spent scrutinizing a different inch of her face. Her hands were too small to reach around her full talon, so her arms did and tried to pry them off. “An open book filled with words others can’t read, huh? You talk so much, why don’t we give your words some meaning?” Two talons to either side of her cheeks, squeezing her until she could feel the claws digging into the skin near the bone, and her lips pursed in a way words weren’t typically formed. She tried to close her eyes, but she’d already seen green, and it was too late.

Losing herself to hypnosis was like falling into a haze, the kind that came after you’d cried for an hour, when your eyes were raw and your chest felt heavy every time you thought about it. But the heaviness came with every dark secret, every little lie she’d spun, every golden boy she’d twisted like lucrative threads around her finger, every fake smile and crafted half truth felt like quivering lips and burning eyes, but it was worse. The truth came spilling out, and when she tried to keep it in, it built like nausea in her stomach and burned her lungs and throat until it came up in a dry heave and she vomited the words. The conscience that had eluded her all her life seemed to find her then like an anchor tied to her head. Neon green in her mind right before the sickening churn of her stomach came. “I-I don--don’t know Jagged St-Stone. I-I’m not--a f-friend of Bruce Wayne.” She snarled each word, because if she bit down on her tongue any harder she’d draw blood. “I-I’m--I’m t-the one who...who...p-planted...my necklace in Marinette’s locker! I-I haaate her! W-with every pa-part of me!” She tried kicking, but her legs wouldn’t listen, and when they did she could muster only the smallest jolt. “I-I’m nooo-ot friends w-with Ladyb-bug…  _ I haaate her more than anyone _ .”

Hypno-Harpy, an akuma prone to smiling with big eyes that stole away the soul, in that moment looked more like a stricken child. Her purple skin turned lavender as she paled. “You… Marinette  _ told _ me, Marinette told all of us.” In the next moment her face was magenta, so full of fury, so thick with anger, that she swore the glasses on her face were less black than on intent. “May you never tell another lie you scheming little witch!”

“Oh, don’t worry, she won’t!”

“But that’ll be thanks to her teachers, not you.”

It was her, and Lila had never felt more thankful and livid at the same time.

Ladybug and Chat Noir landed on the other side of the room, armed with yoyo and staff respectively. She was grinning, and he was smiling nonchalantly, leaned against his staff as though he’d entered a stage with a cane. She nodded over her shoulder. “Chat Noir?”

“On it, Ladybug!”

He made the first move forward, and Hypno-Harpy threw Lila into one of the exhibits and lunged to the side to avoid his strike. He moved right, and she moved back, and he raised a leg to kick that she leaped atop and used to propel herself into the on the back of her wings. She hadn’t been expecting Ladybug’s yoyo around one wing, or the way it would sting when she pulled. Hypno-Harpy screeched, and Chat Noir leaped upward to take a swipe at her glasses. Hypno-Harpy bent over and used the inertia of her body to slam him in the side with hers. He sputtered and twisted a few times before he straightened himself. Hypno-Harpy broke free of Ladybug’s restraints with a surge of power and a screech. Chat Noir and Ladybug dove upwards at once. Chat clawed at her wing but Hypno-Harpy twisted out of his reach, just as Ladybug was coming at her from above and behind. Hypno-Harpy ducked again, but Ladybug held to her back and wrapped her arms around her neck. The weight on her wings sunk Hypno-Harpy to her knees on the floor, and she screamed as Ladybug made a mad lunge for her glasses. Chat Noir rushed forward to make the claim himself, but Hypno-Harpy moved up so Ladybug lost her grip, then down so Chat went lunging straight into Ladybug. He landed on her, and they went rolling.

_ “Hypno-Harpy… their miraculouses are in your grasp. Take your prize and bring them to me! _ ”

Ladybug gasped as she blinked and found her vision filled with Chat Noir’s tan skin and green eyes, staring down at her as his body encased hers under his own. His legs caged her hips, and his arms sat on either side of her. Despite herself, her heart skipped. She could see the heat in his eyes, see the desire in that cheeky grin of his as he quipped: “ _ You know, My Lady, if you wanted to be in my arms, you just had to ask _ .”

But, there was none of that. There was an awkward smile on his face, filled with apology, and his eyes looked less filled with yearning and felt half-full of disillusion. “Sorry.”

Her eyes clouded up, and her face scrunched in pain she couldn’t-- wouldn’t-- let him see. So she squeezed her eyes shut and pulled herself out from under him with so much determination that it bordered aggression. Chat watched her pull herself up and out from under him, and she didn’t see the distress that fell over and weighed down his face, heavy with knitted brows and lips that couldn’t speak, couldn’t ask. She set her sights on Hypno-Harpy and fixed her with a scowl. This was Alya, this was-- partly-- her fault, and she’d fix it. Hypno-Harpy sneered at her with unsettlingly white teeth, leered at her and beckoned herself and Chat with a taunting cackle. She swore she heard Hawkmoth in her laugh, and she swore she’d break his influence. “Chat.”

“Y-yeah?”

“Cover me.”

She flew forward before he could respond, and suddenly this fight wasn’t about magic. Hypno-Harpy might have been fast enough to dodge, but Ladybug was too fast for her talons to catch. Hand-to-hand combat wasn’t typically her favored approach; she was a fourteen-year-old girl, and the most exercise she’d ever known had been carrying a ten-pound bag of flour up and down the stairs, but that was the point of Batman’s training, wasn’t it? Getting faster. Getting stronger. Becoming a hero without the miraculous suit or the yoyo, so that’s what she’d be. Her punches and kicks got faster, thrown seemingly at random; Hypno-Harpy began to struggle, becoming fatigued as Ladybug kept pace but her conviction seemed to grow. Chat Noir watched from a distance, watching with eyes that could hardly keep up and Ladybug and Hypno-Harpy flew about the room in what was increasingly looking more and more like a one-sided skirmish. His jaw became unlatched, eyebrows knitting together in, well, lots of things-- confusion, concern, amazement? He couldn’t settle on one emotion.

Ladybug swung right, Hypno-Harpy dodged left-- but Ladybug had already raised her right foot, and in one kick, in the same kick, she broke the glasses upon Hypno-Harpy’s face, and sent her spiraling across the floor of the ballroom on her elbows and knees.

The akuma, as small, as purple as ever, came flittering out, only to find its way to her yoyo. She reeled it in. “No more evildoing for you, little akuma.” Her voice, he noticed, rang thicker than normal, but that emotion he recognized easier than any she’d ever shown him-- pain. “Bye, bye, little butterfly.” Alya blinked herself into a hazy awake stage, wincing at the pain that was swelling up in her nose.

“You didn’t use your lucky charm, this time.”

“Guess I didn’t need it.” She winced as he drew closer, and he wondered if he imagined the red of her eyes. “But I’ll need it to perform the Miraculous Cure, so… Lucky Charm!” Her yoyo, for all it was worth, had a sense of humor. A karate belt spawned into her hands, bearing the marks of the Ladybug spots. She snorted. Nightwing would get a kick out of that later, she was sure. With a huff, she tossed it into the air: “Miraculous Ladybug!”

Chat came to stand at her side, watching as her magic spread across the museum and set upon snapping zombies awake to become fully functional, once again more secretive, students. Alya’s swelling nose became a nonexistent bump that she still rubbed, looking confused all the while. “Wow, M-- Ladybug, that was… impressive! Where did you learn to fight like that?”

“I… started taking self defense classes as a civilian.”

She could feel him watching her. She could feel his eyes burning two holes into her back the way she felt lemon burn on open cuts when she baked. He had questions. If he didn’t ask, she wouldn’t tell him. She kind of wished he would, but she knew, especially after earlier, that he wouldn’t. No, rolling on the ground with him earlier, feeling him so close, with his eyes on her, waiting for a response. The way he’d met her eyes and looked so uncomfortable, how there’d been no trace of the grin he’d always saved for her. Chat Noir…  _ was truly over her, _ and it  _ hurt _ . She wasn’t an idiot. She knew why she was feeling betrayed, why it felt like he’d turned his back on her despite being at her side without fail every single battle. She knew from watching Adrien dance in Kagami’s arms why it hurt so horribly to see Chat flirt with Ryuko. Because Kagami-- Ryuko-- she was the better woman, the woman Adrien… loved, and the woman Chat now turned his affections to. It was why she’d put off telling him about Batman, why she kept him in the dark, why she’d decided, without even thinking about it, that she didn’t want him on that sparring mat with her. Because it confirmed what she, in all her desperation and denial, had known in her heart all along.

She was in love with Chat Noir, and she was in love with Adrien, and just when one chose Kagami over her, the other one had made the same choice.

“Ladybug?” He set a hand on her shoulder that she flinched to. She turned out of his grasp and gave him a smile, the best smile she could muster, the kind that hid just how close she was to breaking down. He watched her, and she could see the question in his eyes,  _ what was wrong _ ?  _ Nothing _ , she tried to answer him with an extended fist;  _ nothing _ .

He pounded it, and she waved goodbye before she took off, for the first time in awhile, leaving Chat Noir behind to watch her go.

* * *

“Well, that took longer than I anticipated. How long could it possibly take you to find one superpowered villain in a--?” Damian stood, staring out at the courtyard with some stiffness in his chin. He probably hated feeling helpless. She understood that. He was Robin, after all. He’d seen worse than a few mindless mind-control victims spouting out their deepest secrets. She was sure that, in Gotham, these students would all be dead, the result of either Joker’s sadistic mind games or Scarecrow’s poisons. Feeling out of place, out of his element, she understood that well. It was what she felt every time Nightwing showed up and whisked her away to train-- out of place, useless, like a fake. It probably should have settled a seed of resentment in her, but it didn’t. It just made it easier to hear the subtext of Damian’s words--  _ I wanted to help you. I’m sorry I couldn’t. What am I supposed to do, sit here and twiddle my thumbs? _ The sentiment was loud and clear. Maybe she’d started to understand him.

But the moment he turned to face her, he stopped. That jaw unlatched, and in his eyes she could see what looked like thinly veiled pity-- curiosity. Ladybug stood before him, but she’d never felt more like Marinette. Her legs felt like skin and blood with no bone, only the same nerves that ran along her spine as she held herself and tried to bite back what she knew was already coming. He turned and watched her, slowly, the way a man approaches an animal with a burnt leg, bearing its teeth. And she approached him in kind, slow, testing steps. She’d wanted to keep it together for him, because he hardly knew her. Because he had no reason to care. And yet, the way he looked at her, like he was seeing somebody else entirely, she couldn’t help but think him, at the very least, if not capable of empathy, capable of sympathy. She stumbled, and he caught her.

“Tikki,” she swallowed between the tears. “Spots off.”

And she sobbed. In the middle of the ballroom floor, with her head pressed against Damian’s chest as her tears poured into his lap below, they sat together on their knees and she wept.

* * *

“She was lying.” Alya wrapped the blanket so kindly provided by the responding emergency services, tucked herself under it like she could hide away. Adrien and Nino sat to either side of her, Nino with his arms around her, rubbing soothing circles into her shoulders, Adrien by her other side with a hand on her knee. He’d done his best to comfort her as Chat Noir, but her disorientation was growing, as was her panic. He could only get her to a safe place, the courtyard with the emergency first responders, before he could stomach leaving her alone no more and ran off to detransform. He’d grabbed Nino on his way back, knew that they were who she needed right then. “All of this time, she was lying-- about everything! I-I…” Her nose wrinkled in disgust, and she took a long angry sip of her water. “Lila was lying. Marinette would never hide something like that from me.”

Nino shot him a look, a look that read of relief, of relinquishment from being the sane man that kept her out of trouble. “You’re right, Marinette--”

“But that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t keep other secrets.” Nino’s face fell, but Alya’s had never been more deadset in determination. “If she’s keeping secrets from us, and you know she is, then there’s a reason for it. It’s something  _ bad _ , and I… I won’t let her deal with it on her own. Not anymore.”

Adrien wished he could tell her she was wrong, that Marinette wouldn’t hide things, that Marinette wouldn’t lie, but he knew those were all fanciful ideas about Marinette. There was something wrong. They could all see it in the way she nearly tossed her breakfast in the middle of class, how she’d been looking pale, how she’d not only been falling asleep but looking so dead in her live body. She was hiding something, something that wasn’t good, something that was hurting her, and-- he winced, remembering the look on Ladybug’s face, the despondency in her eyes-- he wouldn’t be letting Marinette hurt the way he’d have to let Ladybug hurt. He couldn’t help her, not if she wouldn’t open up to him, but Marinette might, so he nodded. He looked at Alya and he nodded. Alya took his hand in her own and glared out at nothing, thinking of schemes, ideas, game plans. “Now that Lila is out of the way, we can get to the bottom of this.” And they would, though where that would lead them, it was likely they weren’t prepared.


	4. The One Where Marinette Thinks The Wayne Family is in The Mafia

She winced as she realized her nails, and the sound they made tipping and tapping against her tea cup, was deafening in the accompanying silence that filled the room. The fancy room, filled with antique furniture and painted family portraits over the fireplace and books on the shelves for decoration-- maybe. Maybe one of these men spent their time reading the Odyssey, she wasn’t one to judge. These men, of course, being the suited heroes she’d come to know in a few weeks time, standing almost awkwardly in some room at Bruce Wayne’s mansion.

Damian sipped at his tea and reached down to give the huge black dog at his feet, Titus, she was told, a scratch on the head. Titus “humph”ed and leaned into Damian’s searching hand. Marinette tried to focus on the tea in her cup, in the leaves swirling around, leaving small waves of circles to dance in the red of her English Breakfast. She couldn’t help, though, keeping track of the eyes watching her. Nightwing stood across from her, leaned against the fireplace mantle with his arms crossed. He eyed her with mild amusement, but skepticism, caution even, more than she’d ever seen in him on the mat when they trained. It was unsettling, like somebody she’d started to consider a friend now looked at her like an enemy. Red Robin stood at Nightwing’s side, and his scrutiny was less that of amusement and caution, more or less filled instead with resignement and thinly veiled warning. Even Red Hood, who was scarcely present in her time in the batcave, had taken a seat in the chair to Damian’s right where both he and her sat on the loveseat couch. He was messing with a throwing knife, and she would have thought that was a direct intimidation tactic had he hardly acknowledged her since he’d come into the room. When he had, she could feel rather than see his smirk under his helmet. Damian seemed unbothered by any of it, and she wished she could share in his lack of enthusiasm. Revealing that she’d figured him out was, perhaps, not the best move she’d ever made.

This game of chess she’d come to play with the bats, where they kept an eye on her every move, and she sidestepped every attempt at extracting information about Chat and _why wasn’t he there_ , it had all become something done in silence. She thought knowing their identities would give her some leverage, and maybe it would have had she played this a little smarter, but now? Now she was left to ponder why exactly Damian Wayne, the son of one of the richest men in Gotham, spent his free time following some grown man around in a bat cowl-- why all of these fully grown men did this. Despite her best interests, she started spiraling. Because how was it that Batman had all this information on her? How did he always have eyes watching her, like some Sherlock Holmes ordering around homeless children? How was it that he was able to convince some rich kid to fight his battles for him, and did Bruce Wayne know? Unless, of course, that was just how powerful Batman was out of his suit. What if the reason he had eyes everywhere was because he had an army of men at his beck and call? What if Bruce Wayne was a business partner of Batman outside the mask, what if that was how he and his parents made their millions? She glanced around the room, at the men of different shapes and skin and posture, and wondered if they were mere generals under Batman’s thumb--er, wing. What if, and she was dreading how real this theory felt, Batman was a crime lord? What if all of this “rid Gotham of crime” stuff came from the same game she thought she’d been playing on a smaller scale-- chess? What if the end goal was to take over Gotham, and run it himself? What if Bruce Wayne was a part of this little mafia, and that’s why he was okay with his son going out and fighting crime? What if the fact that she knew Damian’s identity meant that she was now a loose end that needed to be disposed of? She eyed Red Hood’s fingers as they twisted the knife between them. What if they were planning on killing her?

Her heart rate picked up, her cheeks flushed. Not good, she was panicking. She could feel Tikki trying to sooth her through the purse, but that made it worse. She had to protect her miraculous-- protect Tikki. Her breathing became heavier, because she’d been so stupid. Her complicated feelings for Chat made her so, so stupid! She’d thought she’d been keeping this game short, keeping Chat in the dark, handling this herself, and because of that, she might die here, alone, without him. What would her parents think? Would she just go missing? Would they never know what happened to her? Would Chat wait for her to return, and would he never see that day? Had Master Fu made a mistake trusting her as The Guardian? Oh, oh no! What would happen to the Miracle Box? Once they murdered her and hid her body in the slums of Gotham where nobody would bat an eye at a little french girl’s corpse, would they use the miraculous within to bring about the end of the world? Would Chat be the only one left who could do anything to stop them? Was she dooming the world because she’d accidentally stumbled upon a deadly secret and was dumb enough to try and manipulate the freaking Batman with it?

“Buginette?” Nightwing’s voice, caked in concern, slithered through her thoughts and reminded her that eyes were on her. “Are you all right?”

“Dick, c’mon, any kid would freak out after they figured out Batman’s identity.”

“I know that, she just looks--!”

Damian was looking at her, now, and she wasn’t sure she wanted that. Wasn’t it a bad thing that she was letting them see how scared she was? And she was, of course, scared. Terrified. She was going to die here and nobody would ever know what happened to her. Then again, would it really be that easy? Alya would never just stop looking for her, and neither would her parents. Nino, Kim, they’d grown up with her, they’d want to find her. Would the rest of the class? Would Adrien? Kagami was awfully tough, probably wouldn’t let go of her without a fight, either. No, even if she did die here, they’d never get away with it. She had friends who would make sure of that. She swallowed. “I won’t go down without a fight.” Whatever Nightwing had been saying to Red Hood had been dropped, abruptly. She raised her chin and met them all head-on, because even if these were her final moments, she would never back down. That’s what it meant to be Ladybug. “If you kill me, my friends will never stop looking for me! Chat will never let you use the miraculous to take over Gotham!”

There was silence. Nightwing and Red Robin blinked at her, blank, like they understood what each individual word meant but couldn’t piece together her meaning. Damian, too, looked at her with some insulting amount of confusion. Red Hood froze in his chair, stopped twirling his knife, and stared at her. She clutched the teacup in her hands and felt that if she squeezed any harder it’d break, but she kept her chin up. She was Ladybug, and she’d die Ladybug if she had to.

Red Hood started laughing. A full on cackle, where he threw his head back and grabbed at his sides, the kind of laughter that drew tears to the eyes. Red Robin and Damian tilted their heads and gaped at her as if trying to puzzle her out, like she was playing some game they were yet to find the board to. Nightwing’s blank expression turned fond, with lips that curled but struggled not to laugh; he looked at her the way a man looks at a kitten that's gotten its head stuck in an aluminum can. “Aw, Mari, we-- we’re not going to kill you.”

Red Hood struggled to breath as he leaned forward and hunched over himself. “O-Oh! Oh that’s good! Wait-- wait until Bats hears that one!”

Damian made that annoying “tt” sound with his teeth. Red Robin shook his head and grinned to himself. Her heart, which had been riding so wildly high in her chest, was calmed by the ocean wave that came with their laughter. “You… you’re not?”

Damian scoffed. “We’re not such brutes as to butcher rather than cultivate deductive talent, though talent is a rather strong word after you came to that conclusion. Rest assured, even if he were a crime lord aiming for total control of Gotham, my father has a strict _no killing_ policy.”

“Your _father_?” Her heart skipped again.

“Dick, you’ve been training her, haven’t you? That’s, like, Bat-training 101!”

“I-- she’s not going up against our people, she’s going up against her people! I assumed murder wasn’t even an idea on her radar!”

“What happens when she has to fight actual Parisian crime, eh, Dick?”

Her heart started up again, this time in the panic of confusion. “Wait a minute, wait a minute! There’s no need to name-call! Do you all kiss your mothers with that mouth? Nightwing is not a--” She winced, “--dick!” She hated that word, any curse word, really, felt like a pinch from Maman on the ear. All three elder Robins froze. She turned to Damian, who was looking at her, again, as if she’d said something immeasurably stupid. “Batman is your father? I thought your father was--?”

“Bruce Wayne.” Damian cocked an eyebrow. “You mean to tell me that it took you a quarter of the day spent with my civilian self to draw the conclusion that I was Robin, yet somehow didn’t piece together the identities of everyone else in this room?” She frowned. Was she supposed to? He huffed. “Unbelievable.” Red Hood lost it. His laughter filled the room with such manic merriment that he fell out of his seat and rolled about on the carpet, clutching his sides and, she was pretty sure, crying.

Red Robin sighed and came closer, taking a seat at the armrest closest to her, hands folded in his lap as he tilted his head at her and smiled in jest. “Marinette, how many Robins has Batman had?”

She pouted. “Um, four, including Damian? And that’s all of you, right? You were all Robin?”

Red Robin nodded. “Now, Damian told you he has three brothers, right?”

“Sure! Jason Todd,” Red Hood sat back up, as if she’d… called his name. She looked at him, jaw dropping as realization dawned on her face. He saluted her. She looked at Red Robin “...Tim Drake…” Red Robin’s joking smile turned almost proud as he nodded, both in confirmation and prompt to continue. She looked at Nightwing, who stood only a few feet away, smiling fondly just as he always had. “...and _Dick_ Grayson-- holy cow! Bruce Wayne is Batman!”

“Yes, Miss, he is.” The door creaked open and there stood a tall, well-dressed british man, pushing along a cart of small tea sandwiches. He rolled into the room with prim posture, so prim that she was surprised he wasn’t sticking his nose in the air. He came to a stop at Nightwing’s side, taking a plate of sandwiches and setting it on the coffee table before them. “Master Bruce is on his way. He heard of the akuma attack this morning and turned around right away. I’m afraid his plane won’t arrive for a few more hours.”

Red Robin nodded to the butler with a smile. “Marinette, this is Alfred.”

Said man took a polished kettle from the cart and nodded for her to hold out her teacup. She obliged, and he refilled it for her. “Alfred Pennyworth, at your service, Miss.”

“U-Um, Marinette is fine.”

“Very well, Marinette. Welcome to Wayne Manor. It is to my understanding that you share some of Master Bruce’s… more peculiar interests.”

“Crime fighting or dressing up in animal-themed supersuits?”

Alfred raised an eyebrow. “Both, I suppose.” He leaned over and refilled Damian’s cup, as well. “Oh, and as for that popcorn recipe you were looking for, the key is a dash of garlic onion blend and a pinch of kosher salt.” Her cheeks lit up, and she found a smile on her face where there’d been a horrified thin-lipped frown only a few minutes ago.

* * *

She gave her parents a call, told them she was planning on spending the night at Alya’s and to please not be angry with her. They were surprisingly okay with it, suspiciously okay with it. She told herself that it was because she’d been the target of the akuma that morning, that they wanted her to feel better, and that Alya always made that happen. The real reason for her stay, though, was that Batman wanted to see her himself. She’d probably be at Wayne Manor late into the night, and there was little reason to put Nightwing to the trouble of bringing her back to Paris so late in the night. Alfred assured her there was plenty of space, that she’d have a room set up in an hour or so. Nightwing-- Dick-- offered to show her around himself, but Damian had snatched up the “honor” himself.

“He’ll never tell you, but he’s happy he’s had you around.” Dick had whispered to her on her way out of the room. “Friends mean a lot to Damian. Besides, I think you remind him of somebody.”

Damian had shown her through the kitchen, a large white-tiled room with so much counter space that even her papa’s bakery kitchen shied in comparison, spotless and span-- she could hardly believe anybody had ever cooked in there. The hallways were long, there were lots of turns, and she knew she’d get lost if he left her alone too long. At one point the turns had gotten so sharp that she’d nearly run into a wall. He’d grabbed her by the wrist and straightened her with a cocked eyebrow and leading hand, for which she thanked him. He’d shown her the Wayne Manor gardens, how the bushes and flowers went on for yards, how there were pruned shrubs in the shapes of animals, how there was a beautiful fountain with springs that ran in a rectangle down the length. He’d told her that Titus loved to run through the fountain and drink the water, but that Alfred got mad when he did. Titus, of course, was a very large dog, and his size did not lend him easy to a bathtub. Damian was the one who washed him, usually, which surprised her. She seldom saw a smile on his face, but when he talked about Titus, his smile was as bright as Adrien’s.

He’d taken her to his room after she’d asked to see it. He’d scoffed and told her it was nothing special, that he needed nothing, and wanted for nothing, as was his nature. “What makes you say that?”

He was silent for a moment, as if contemplating giving her a real answer. “... I’m a weapon. The day I want for anything is the day I fail to fulfill my purpose.”

That wasn’t what she’d been expecting him to say. Something about how trivial possessions were, maybe, something about his sense of style being more minimalist. She could have seen that, an artist who kept his visions to his work and not his space. But that, the blatant disregard for-- for his humanity? She reeled. “You’re just a kid, Damian. You’re allowed to want things!”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, face solid and still, like he’d carved it into stone. “Are you not _just a kid_ , too, Miss Guardian?” He’d said it flippantly, as though the title meant nothing, didn’t exist, but she knew that was far from what he’d meant.

He’d shown her to his room, and it was as he’d said it was. A queen-sized bed with a thick comforter on a frame of polished chestnut wood. The carpet that lay at the foot of the bed was regal and green, red in trimming. The desk was clean, uncluttered by art supplies, though she suspected such was merely hidden away in his drawers; that was a shame, it would have been the one thing that made the room look like his. He’d been right, that it was no different from any other room in the Wayne home. She imagined her guest room would look in every way the same. The realization struck her with a hollowing chill that Damian could leave the room and never come back, and there’d be seldom a trace he’d ever been there to begin with. “I told you, nothing you won’t be seeing in your quarters tonight, Marinette.”

“Why?”

He could have scoffed, could have pressed her and made her clarify her meaning, but he didn’t. He sighed. “You are aware that I was… not with Father until three years ago.” Now that he mentioned it, she had heard something about the tabloids leaking news of another Wayne kid, rumored to be the love child of one of his-- as the tabloids put it, _many_ \-- lovers. She hadn’t thought of that until now.

“So you were… with your mom?”

“Yes.” Her instinct had been to blame Bruce for this weird, horrible idea that Damian’s life wasn’t his own, that he was some tool to use against the criminals of Gotham. After all, the man had tried to take away her miraculous, had insisted that because she didn’t know martial arts she wasn’t good enough to be Ladybug… but he’d also raised Nightwing, to her understanding, and every Robin after him. Dick didn’t go around spouting about how his meaning in life was fighting crime, and failing to do that made him useless. Jason was more of a wildcard, but it was that wild energy that told her he also didn’t feel the way Damian did. Sure, Jason might have thought of himself as a weapon, but she got the feeling he felt he was so much more than that, too. Tim, he was all brain. A sleuth worthy of inheriting The Greatest Detective in the World title, but the way he smiled and his passionate hunt for the truth of every case told her, for sure, that Bruce wasn’t the one instilling this impossible standard in his children. No, Damian was telling her, quite plainly, that this was his mother’s doing.

“Tell me about her. What was she like?” He stood in the center of the room, at the end of his bed, while she padded her way to his desk.

“Is. She’s not in the ground, there are few who could put her there, one of which would never.” One? Bruce? “Her name is Talia. Her and my father were… lovers.” Well, color her shocked that they had to be _something_ like that for her to pop out a baby 9 months later. The thought colored her cheeks, but she shook her head clear of it. Gross, dirty stuff. “Father didn’t know about me until Mother brought me to him.”

She traced her fingers over the backrest of the chair, tapping along the edge until her fingers made their way down to the flat of the desk. She was pleasantly surprised to find traces of ink that’d been spilled into the crevices. They’d been cleaned thoroughly, of course, but the thick black and blue still left their mark if she looked. There were pieces of lead, too, lost to the back of the desk where they’d rolled out of reach. Perhaps Damian had left his touch on the room, after all. “So, why are you with your dad now? If she kept you from him for ten years…”

“My grandfather was murdered by one of his pupils. I was to inherit the League after his death, and that made me a target. Father’s company was the safest place for me.”

Okay, so his grandfather was… another rich guy? A nobleman? Was Damian a prince? She’d have to press him on the _League_ aspect later. “Was?”

“Are you going to quiz me on every aspect of my existence?”

She squeaked. “Um, no! Sorry! Just curious, I guess!” She nodded to his desk, tracing over the marks of ink and lead stained in the wood. “Hey, I showed you mine, wanna show me yours?” He raised an eyebrow at her.

His artbook was larger than her own. Where she had a small notebook she could carry around in her bag-- after all, she’d never know when inspiration would hit-- he had an artbook roughly the size of 2 of her own, maybe three. He’d filled most of the pages with sketches that left her breathless. They were all nearly photorealistic, birds on twigs, portraits of his brothers, lots of sketches of Titus. The sheer talent made her eyes burn, though Damian would probably look at her funny if she started crying, so she tried not to. How could somebody so volatile, who believed he was a weapon and nothing more create something so beautiful and still think he was a tool? This art, it was proof that he was one of the kindest souls she’d ever met, reflected in every drawn pat to Titus’s head, every smile he sketched on one of his brothers. This boy loved, and he loved deeply, how could he pretend to be anything other than Damian? “These are beautiful.”

“Thank you…”

He seemed almost surprised by her praise, like he’d been expecting maybe an awkward smile or a pat on the shoulder, but there she was, trying to hold back tears. She smiled at him. “You know, for a weapon, you sure see the world like an artist.”

“--tt--”

She flipped the next page, and to her great amusement, Damian’s eyes lit up with unbridled horror. “Marinette, wait--!” She leaped back as he lunged forward, raising her arm in the air to keep his sketchbook away. What exactly was he trying to hide? He glared up at her, green eyes fuming with fire, so mad that forest green turned nearly shamrock. She grinned at him.

“Damian, c’mon, what could possibly be so embarrassing--?” And then she saw the sketch. Well, it wasn’t a sketch, this one was a full art piece. Colored with copic markers, shaded so beautifully that she vaguely considered asking Damian for some tips. This one wasn’t just photorealistic, no, it bordered on fantastical, romanticized, like Chat himself had gotten ahold of the piece and made it as cheesy as his puns. The piece was of a figure she recognized, flying tall in the company of the bright midday sun, raven hair billowing wildly in the wind as big blue eyes, filled with glee and childlike wonder. He was floating above a cornfield, a red shed shied away in the background compared to the red on his chest. The smile was as gorgeous as the eyes, toothy, big, welcoming. She knew, in that moment, exactly why he hadn’t wanted her to see it, because she probably would have hid the various clippings of Adrien’s face from him, too. “Oh… you’re in love.”

“I am not!” He took the sketchbook from her with a face so red, she entertained the idea that Damian was part strawberry. “Jon is just--”

“If you say _just a friend_ to me, I will transform and swing my way back to Paris. I don’t care if it takes me all night!” Damian pouted at her-- _pouted!!!_ \-- and shoved the artbook back into his desk. “I’m sorry for looking when you didn’t want me to, Damian, but hey! If there’s anybody who understands, it’s me! You and your brothers totally saw the Adrien clips on my board, didn’t you? See? I’m just kooky Marinette!” She emphasized this point by drawing circles with her fingers on either side of her head, rolling her eyes around and sticking her tongue out of her mouth.

“This is different.”

“How is this different? Superboy-- wait, did you say Jon? As in Jon Kent? Lois Kent and Clark Kent’s son? Oh my gosh, is Clark Kent Superman?” Damian cocked an eyebrow at her, again, and scowled.

“Are you done?”

“Sorry.”

“This is different because Jon is my partner. We are our father’s successors, and friends, but we are nothing more.”

She smiled, because she understood more than he could understand. She’d been on both sides of this little conundrum, loving Adrien and now, more recently, loving Chat, too. “He’s your best friend, isn’t he?”

“--tt--”

She pulled his desk chair out and took a seat, fingers twiddling in her lap as she glanced down. “That’s the best thing, isn’t it? Being in love with your best friend?”

“I’m not in love with him!”

 _Keep telling yourself that, Damian_ . “Look, Damian, I’ve been there. For a long time, the boy I liked… I thought he was so out of my league. Adrien is a model, and he’s rich, and he’s super smart, and despite all of that, he’s the sweetest, brightest guy I’ve ever met. Like a huge ray of sunshine.” She nodded to the drawer where his notebook now sat, locked away. “Superboy looks the same way to you.” Damian opened his mouth, but said nothing, just turned away and glared at nothing out his window. “And I know what it’s like to be in love with your partner, too. I--I didn’t realize it until recently, but Chat Noir… he told me he was in love with me, and I was an idiot, and I kept rejecting him for Adrien.” Damian was looking at her then, like she was so sublimely stupid that he couldn’t quite wrap his brain around it. She laughed, pitifully. “Yeah, I know. I was so stupid. I wouldn’t let myself entertain Chat because I was so focused on some guy that has always, always seen me as _just a friend_. Then, sure enough, Adrien gets a girlfriend, and she’s amazing, and she’s everything that I’m not. And I’m jealous enough and dumb enough to pull her away from a date with him to give her a miraculous, and what happens? Chat falls for her, too! So now, because I was so,” she eyed him as she said this, “stubborn, and professional, that I lost Chat, too. I guess what I’m saying is, be honest with yourself, Damian. Can you honestly look at that drawing and tell me there isn’t a part of you that wants him?” His cheeks burned, and he turned away. That fire that had been raging in his eyes had boiled down to a simmer, thoughtful, scared, hopeful. “Just… think about it, okay? And if you do decide you like him, consider telling him? Believe me,” she laughed, but it sounded sad even to her ears. “I wish I had.”

* * *

Batman-- _Bruce_ \-- arrived close to two in the morning, and it was Nightwing-- _Dick_ \-- who roused her from her sleep to meet with him in the batcave. To her surprise, the man was ballsy enough to keep his secret base directly under his huge manor. She gathered that was why she’d never been allowed up the stairs, and the thought that his identity had been so close, and that she’d never taken the opportunity, mocked her. Bruce was in full Batman garb by the time she made it down. She wondered if the man ever slept. He stood behind the main computer, readjusting his cuffs, and turned when he heard her padding down the stairs. “Marinette, you understand the importance of a secret identity.”

Oh, so he was making sure she wasn’t planning on telling anybody. Considering finding out Robin was Damian set in motion a domino effect of revealed civilian personas, somehow including Superman and his son, she was well prepared to keep her mouth shut. Ironically, the less she knew, the better. “Despite your lack of regard for mine, I know how to keep a secret.” The corner of his mouth flinched upwards.

“My boys have become quite fond of you, you know. Especially after tonight.” Tonight? What had been so special about tonight aside from her making a bumbling fool of herself? She’d made Jason Todd _cry_ he’d been laughing so hard. Batman stepped toward her, and it took every ounce of Ladybug in her not to take a step back. He stared down at her, from behind that cowl of his. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

In the next moment, he was heading towards the sparring ring, and she was watching him go with a heaping, growing befuddlement. He nodded for her to follow. “I was wrong to try and take your miraculous away from you and Ad--Chat. We know very little of the power of the miraculous, and ancient power in the past has been known to corrupt.” He wasn’t wrong, of course, Hawkmoth was a great example of the corruption a miraculous in the wrong hands could bring. Mayura didn’t make them look any better. “But I see now that it is not the miraculous itself that corrupts. You have been proof of that, Marinette.”

Wait… was he… praising her? She blinked. “So… does this mean you’ll stop doing surveillance over Chat and I?”

“No.” She huffed. “You and Chat are still too young. Hawkmoth is a threat that can only grow more dangerous with time. You need to be prepared for things to get dirty when that happens.”

“So what, exactly, is the point of calling me down here at 2am?”

He exhaled and stripped his hands of his gloves. “Fight me. Let me see what Dick’s been teaching you.”

“You can’t be serious!”

But the blank stare told her he was so very serious.

So she did. They sparred, and she could hardly land a hit on him, but she was too fast for him to land more than a few blows, himself. She was best at dodging, she guessed, since that was what she and Chat spent most of their time doing against akumas. At one point he’d thrown a punch and she’d used it to propel herself off the ground and do a flip over his shoulder. She’d gone for a sweeping kick after, but he’d jumped and sent a kick to her face that sent her flying. She’d rolled, and winced at the bruise that she was sure was going to be as dark as her eyes come morning, but she’d kept going. She ran at him, and he sidestepped her, then aimed a quick disarming chop to the back of her neck, but she’d seen that and moved forward to follow the hand rather than meet it, then twisted to send an uppercut at his chin, which he’d caught and twisted behind her back. That was where they ended, with her face pressed against the mat and him pinning her to the ground by her bent wrist. “Good, but not good enough. Yet.”

“Good enough?” The words came out in pained gasps, but she got them out. He released her, then offered her a hand up.

“One day, with Dick’s help, you and Chat could be members of the Titans, and if you work hard enough, the Justice League. I want to prepare you for that day.”

Join the Justice League? Her and Chat? She hadn’t even thought about that. “I thought you guys just wanted to keep an eye on us?” She rubbed at her jaw with one hand and took his outstretched one in the other. “What changed?”

“You proved that you didn’t need to rely on your miraculous to win a fight. I can make you and Chat into the heroes you’re meant to be, if you’ll let me.”

“Do I have much of a choice?”

He grinned. “No.”

“Then I guess I’ll accept.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe my friend AnxiousCupcake for that Dick joke at the beginning xD
> 
> Eh?
> 
> ......Eh?


	5. Green

Marinette disappeared after the akuma did, and so did Damian Wayne.

Nobody had seen them, he and Alya had asked just about every Gotham Academy jacket they saw, and their own classmates were just as clueless.

“Ooh, how scandalous!” He’d heard Chloe and Sabrina whispering theories to each other, but that wasn’t his concern. Marinette had told him-- Chat Noir him-- that she and Damian were not romantically involved; he’d just have to take her word for it. Alya also seemed unsure, but in the skeptic journalistic way.

“They definitely knew each other before this. The question is how?” Alya had left him with that thought on the bus ride back to school. She was right. They ran down the possibilities-- met him over social media? There was no indication Damian Wayne even had any form of social media, and if they took it a step further and looked at his brothers, Marinette’s accounts ran nearly parallel there was so little interaction between her and the Wayne family. They didn’t follow the same tags, didn’t have mutual friends, didn’t tag each other or even pursue similar interests. So, that left connections outside of Marinette. Jagged Stone? Nope, none of Damian’s brothers followed him or seemed to be a fan. Jagged Stone had never even performed in Gotham. Her grandmother? She was a cool woman-- cool enough to also not have any social media. It was possible, though, that she was still acquainted with them in personal life, but they lacked a way of contacting her short of asking Marinette for her grandmother’s phone number like a bunch of weirdos. So that left Mister and Missis Dupain-Cheng. Maybe they’d have answers?

“Chat Noir!” A plate of croissants, laid before him with eager hands. That was what greeted him as he knocked on their front door. He smiled at them, or uh, he tried to, and took one in gracious fingers-- er, claws. Tom and Sabine gave him their warmest smiles, but he was worried, too. He could see the restrained panic in their eyes, the strained way Sabine took the plate back to the kitchen counter, the way Tom sighed with shallow air. “I take it you came looking for Marinette?”

“I came looking for answers, actually. I know Marinette isn’t here.” He bit into the croissant and hummed. “Your goods just get better and better, sir!”

Tom smiled, but the way he shifted uncomfortably told him the compliment hardly registered. “Things have gotten worse since that night.”

Chat nodded. “I know. Marinette was targeted by an akuma today, though I’m sure you’ve heard that. Um, have you guys ever gotten any orders from Gotham?”

“Gotham?” Sabine returned to the living room, wiping her hands on her apron. She glanced at Tom, unsure. “Not that I recall. Why?”

Huh. So no connection through her parents, then. “Do you know if um, Miss Dupain has ever visited Gotham?”

“Well, she’d been all over the world! I’m sure she’s been there once.” Tom took a seat on the couch, patting the seat beside him. Sabine followed, resting one hand on her husband’s lap. Chat circled around and stood in front of them. He would have taken a seat, but he wasn’t planning on talking long. “Why are you asking about my mother? What do you think Gotham has to do with Marinette?”

“Today the the museum, I found her with Damian Wayne. They’re friends. I was wondering if you could tell me how that happened?” The surprised looks on their faces told him all he needed to know.

“Damian Wayne?”

“Bruce Wayne’s son? Are you sure?”

He hated to do this, really he did, but there was still a ball in his chest that felt green and it was spreading, and he needed to make it go away. He needed answers, Alya needed answers, and if he had to do something… questionable to get them, he would. He could hear Ladybug’s scolding voice and see her eyes in his mind, crossing her arms as she shook her head at him.  _ You had no business, Chat Noir. If you needed information, you should have gotten it some other way _ . Well, he was sorry, and he’d do whatever he had to to make this up to Marinette, but she’d been not herself lately. Marinette was pale, and tired, and she was texting odd things and hiding from her friends, and when he’d had her under his arm, she hadn’t acted like herself. Blushing, stuttering, it was what she did around Adrien, not Chat, and he just needed proof it wasn’t because Damian was there-- no, no, he just needed to find out why she’d been acting so strange. Marinette didn’t go around making friends with rich kids. She didn’t like a lot of rich kids. She hadn’t liked him. So why was Damian so different? “I know this is going to sound bad, but… would you mind if I looked through her room?”

Though there was clear hesitation on their part, Tom and Sabine were willing to let him look around, so long as they joined him. He imagined they’d never so blatantly disregarded their daughter’s right to privacy, but he also imagined there usually were no secrets between her and her parents. He and his father were the same way. No secrets, no snooping, not that his father needed to snoop. He knew his schedule like the back of his hand or his latest design. He’d gotten the impression that her parents were a little more lenient, didn’t need to know her whole schedule, but the implicit trust was still very much there. Marinette, so caught up in whatever was wrong, was squandering it. Ladybug’s flashing eyes hit his soul again.  _ I’m sorry, Ladybug, but I have to save her _ . From what, he wasn’t sure yet, but he’d promised to himself a long time ago, maybe even before Weredad, that he would always,  _ always _ come for Marinette. No amount of Ladybug’s ire, even in light of her recent cagey, buttoned-up behavior, could make him go back on that.

The thought gave him pause. Ladybug had been acting funny since Miracle Queen, and originally he’d pawned it off on the role of being The Guardian. She was stressed, he understood that, and he was there for her. They were partners (even if she didn’t want to be anything more, even if he could feel a piece of him break every time she said that, he’d always be there for her). They were still perfectly in-sync, still knew that, if one of them went left, the other would go right. They were still the perfect partners, but he was worried about her as a friend. She wasn’t telling him things, he could tell, because she watched him like she wanted to say something, with those big bluebell eyes of hers, and then she’d pull back. She’d say nothing. He’d tried to reach out to her. “Are you feeling okay? Something going on in your personal life? You look a little tired. Ladybug?”  _ She winced every time he said her name _ . She jumped every time, laughed at him, waved him off, smiled-- or tried to. He was worried, to be honest, that she was thinking of placing the Ladybug miraculous in the hands of another, since she had to take the role of Guardian. He’d have to stop her sometime soon, have a serious talk with her, try to steer her away from that if he could. But he wasn’t so sure it was the new role that had her acting weird. Especially now that Marinette was going off the rails, too.

There was nothing odd in her room, not for Marinette anyway. Some tossed up, rolled-up sketches of designs tossed in the bin, several of which he thought were actually pretty good. Her computer didn’t have any weird files on it, at least nothing more incriminating than some saved bookmarks to YouTube links-- all of which lead to different fashion shows in which he’d participated (he’d grinned from ear to ear and added a heart emoji by one of the bookmarked tabs. He’d looked particularly dashing in that one with her hat). He’d been hoping for some suspicious emails or something, but all he found were subscription emails to various store websites. He’d found her diary, but it was in a very sophisticated lock, and when he asked to take it with him, he’d gotten a very stern, very icy, glare from Tom. He’d set it riiiight back under the bed where he’d found it. Her parents had found a sketchbook filled with gifts for friends with upcoming birthdays, none of which were noted to belong to Damian Wayne or any of his family members, so that was interesting. He made a note of that, and hummed as he scanned the room for something more incriminating, and eventually his eyes landed on something.

Well, it wasn’t incriminating. It was… a strange sign, maybe a reflection of her recent odd behavior. The pictures of him-- Adrien him-- that used to sit on the board against her bed, the pictures that were proof that she admired him, that she was his fan, those pictures were gone. What replaced them wasn’t even photos with friends, or even pictures of Luka, or other models, or something meaningful. No, the space where his pictures used to stick was empty. A boring, dull, cork board. No design pieces, no notes to herself, not even something he could use like an invitation to a Wayne High Society party. Just open space where he used to be.

There was something about that, something about the way she hadn’t even replaced those pictures, that left his lips twisting, quivering. He thought he’d feel a sinking pit in his stomach, but that green ball he couldn’t identify, that churning, growing feeling grew vines. It stretched into his chest, leeched down into his stomach, and made his fists clench. He leaped down to the floor below. “Marinette… I thought Marinette was Adrien’s fan?”

Sabine laughed, a small, weighted, not-quite-happy laugh, but it was trying to be one. Her hands were busy searching through Marinette’s school bag, gently sifting through folders and books. It was a good place to search, something Marinette had on her almost as often as she had her little side satchel. “She is, but he has a girlfriend, now, she told us. It pains me to see her go through this again,” Weredad, still, lingered in the stale air between them, a miasma that never went away. “But Adrien can’t help the way he feels, either. Marinette tells me Kagami is a very nice girl.”

“So she’s just… over him? Just like that?”

“Chat Noir,” Tom’s hand was on his shoulder, heavy, so very heavy. “You should know it’s never that easy.” He nodded, or he thought he did.

“Tom! Chat Noir! I think I found something!”

He was at her side the next second, and so was Tom, and both leered over her shoulder as she withdrew her hand from Marinette’s backpack, something black, and thin, and sharp, between her fingers. He wasn’t sure he was seeing what was in front of him, and even if it explained the sudden familiarity with a Gothamite, and maybe her most recent disappearing acts, or her questionable sleep schedule, it raised a million other questions, and he wasn’t sure he wanted the answer to a single one of them. A batarang sat in Sabine’s careful hand, a small, blinking light attached to the right wing. “Oh, Tom…” Tears welled in Sabine’s eyes. “You don’t think…?”

Tom and Chat exchanged frightened glances.

In the next moment there was a small blip sound effect, the kind that was so obviously a cell phone notification. Tom huffed and reached for the cell in his back pocket, drawing the screen open with his finger. “It’s Marinette. She’s asking to stay the night at Alya’s house.”

Sabine turned to Chat. “She’s not at Alya’s, is she?”

“No, Missis Dupain-Cheng… I don’t think so.” He leaned down to Sabine and extended a hand, a request, to take the batarang. She looked at him with bloodshot eyes and a tense jaw. He watched her, tried to tell her with his eyes, because maybe it was habit by now, that he could be trusted. She raised her chin and took a deep, shallow breath, then handed it to him. “Believe me, Missis Dupain-Cheng, I will save Marinette, no matter what she’s gotten herself into.”

She gave him a watery smile. “You better!”

He smiled back. “Tell her it’s okay to spend the night there. I’m going to make some calls.”

* * *

“Augh! Okay, okay! I give, I give!” She raised the hand closest to her head, the one that wasn’t pinned behind her back, and hit the ground twice-- her white flag. Damian huffed and pulled his knee from her back.

“You’re too defensive. You’ll get nowhere if you don’t take initiative.” Boy, if she hadn’t heard that before. “Dick has been going too easy on you.”

“Really? Because my bruises say otherwise.” She sat up and rubbed at her wrist, rubbing the tension out with her thumb. She was stupid to think she’d get a day of rest at the Wayne Manor. The morning had been so nice! She’d woken to the rising sun, warm covers, and a polite knock at the door from Alfred, who had prepared a breakfast that would have made Papa jealous. Hot eggs, crispy bacon, cheese, bread, her choice of juice from orange to apple! She’d been in heaven, for sure, and it must have shown on her face because Dick had laughed at her and told her that Alfred always made plenty, that nobody-- save for Jason, who had gone home-- would try to steal her plate. Her face had turned an unflattering shade of red, she was sure. They were a super rich family, just like the Agreste family or the Tsurugi family. She should have been on her best behavior, how embarrassing…

“If you have the energy to scarf food like an ingrate, you have the energy to train.” That’s what Damian had said, and though every inch of her told her to put him in his place, she knew from the look on Batman’s-- Bruce’s-- face that there was no getting out of it. Besides, Dick had scolded Damian for the jerk behavior, so she supposed she could spare him her scathing reply. Damian glanced at her as she sat up, stood tall like a grown man, even in his little body. He walked like he owned the world, and eyed her like she was a part of that. “Your bruises are a symptom of your inability, and you’d have much worse if he were stricter. You won’t get such leniency from me.”

She smiled. “If you fight as good as you draw, I might be in trouble.”

“I fight much better than I sketch, Dupain-Cheng.”

“Poor Jon, must get punched in the gut by your affection all the time, then.”

His face turned red. “Would-- you--!” He heaved a sigh. “I told you, Jon is my partner, and nothing more.” And he could say that until he was blue in the face and she’d never believe him. She giggled to herself.

“All right!” She pushed herself to her feet and raised her fists, the way she imagined people who did karate reared to fight. Damian watched her with crossed arms and a cocked brow. She grinned, feeling more like Ladybug than she had in a long while. “So, wanna teach me what a good offense looks like?”

And he did. It hurt, a lot, but it worked. Damian was meaner than Dick was, more ruthless, went for cheap shots if she let him, but that was for a good reason. There was no  _ cheap shot _ in a life or death fight, the kind he went up against. Hawkmoth might not have had plans to kill her and Chat Noir, but one day he could, or somebody else could. Especially if she and Chat ended up with The Titans. She took a few cheap shots herself, one even a kick to the groin, but Damian had seen that coming from a mile away and blocked it; he’d given her a smile, though, for trying that. She started taking riskier swings, punches at his chin, at his chest, even though only two landed, and he’d let that happen, she could tell. He talked like Dick was soft for taking it easy on her, but he was, too. He took a swing and she blocked it with one arm and swung back with her other. He dodged it and twisted around and kicked her in the lower back, which she used to propel herself forward with a flip. She landed on her feet and he nodded at her. In a few moments, he’d had her pinned to the ground again, twisting the same wrist like a pound of putty under his hands. She wasn’t going down the same way, not again. She was flexible, enough to use that. She trapped his hips between her calves and lifted her hips off the floor, then sent him rushing forward with a kick, slamming him face-first into the ground in front of her. He fell forward and tumbled until he landed on his back with a grunt. He panted. “Hah… not bad, amateur.”

She grinned, but she wasn’t about to pretend that pulling that off had been easy. That lift and the following kick had put her on her back, same as she’d done to him. “Not so bad yourself, Boy Wonder.” Both of them sat there for a few moments, catching their breaths. It gave her a moment to think, take it all in. Batman wasn’t a threat, wasn’t planning on taking away her Miraculous the first move she made, not anymore. Now, he was a mentor, kind of, somebody who wanted to mold her and Chat Noir into even better superheroes. She could live with that. The stress of impending doom was no longer hanging over her like one of Stormy Weather’s clouds, and in the case that she and Chat Noir needed backup, she wouldn’t necessarily need to risk putting other miraculouses in circulation, no matter how temporary, to win. Things were looking up. She raised her head to look at Damian, and he did the same to look at her; they both chuckled. “Chat would have a field day with your sour attitude, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know, since you’ve been keeping him from us.”

She tensed up. “I… I have n-no idea w-what you’re talking about.”

“We need to make a better liar out of you, too, Dupain-Cheng.”

Of course they’d noticed. She could only hold off from telling Chat Noir for so long, awkward broken heart or not. They’d been patient with her, gave her the benefit of the doubt when she told them that she hadn’t had the opportunity to tell Chat about them, yet, but after Hypno-Harpy, there was no way they were going to buy that anymore. She'd had ample opportunity to tell him, and she could tell Dick had known that, that they’d all known that, and they’d kept their mouths shut. “I-I just didn’t want to involve him in this, you know? I didn’t exactly want to be under Batman’s thumb, I wasn’t going to just let your dad have Chat, too.”

Damian sat up, folding one arm over his bent leg as he watched her. She stayed where she laid on the floor, eyes closed, because maybe her eyes would betray her if he saw them. Or maybe she wanted to pretend she was still in the Wayne Manor kitchen, having breakfast. Just not here, having this conversation. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with what you told me last night, would it?”

Oh no. She sat up, cheeks turning pink, hand waving away his accusations frantically. “M-Me liking Chat? N-No! No way! Why would it?” Damian just sat there, unmoving, aside from the slight narrow of his eyes and the rest of his deadpan stare. “...Okay maybe it has a little to do with that.”

“This is for his own good, Marinette. What partner will he be if he’s always three steps behind you?”

“You’re right, I know you’re right! I just… I need a little more time, okay? Talking to him…” Hurts. Talking to Chat, seeing Chat, hurt. She was just reminded of the way he looked at Ryuko, the way Adrien looked at Kagami, about how she wasn’t enough to keep Chat, and how she’d never been enough to catch Adrien. He didn’t care about her anymore, and she knew it, she’d known it for weeks, maybe months, and she’d been keeping it locked away in a box of other revelations she wasn’t ready for yet. Like how she wasn’t ready to be The Guardian. Like how it was her fault Master Fu was gone. How Kagami was gorgeous, and cool, and powerful, and confident, and it had always been a matter of time before Chat saw that and dropped her and Adrien saw his chance with her and took it. She’d been so relieved when Chat had stayed true to Ladybug when she’d “confessed” as Marinette, but of course that was going to happen. Marinette was never going to be Kagami, and neither was Ladybug…

“You’re spiraling again. You have the same look on your face. You don’t think Chat Noir is a part of the mafia now, do you?”

“Oh hah, hah…” She sighed, and shrugged her shoulders. Because that wasn’t funny.

Damian tilted his head, an inquisitive look in his eyes. “Father will not wait much longer. He will tell him if you don’t.”

“No! Please, just… give me some time. I’ll tell him about you guys, I just--!” She bit down on her tongue.

“If you want my advice, let go of him.” She sat up, and watched him, and he watched her with eyes that dared her to make the wrong move and turn away. He wanted her to heed this advice, and that meant her full attention. Like a teacher. “Attachments are a weakness and a pain. If you aren’t worth loving, then don’t get disappointed when other people see that.” She swallowed, and he glanced away. As true as that was, it was painful, and she could tell it was a lesson Damian seemed to have learned a long time ago. She wanted to argue with him, but was there a point? He was right. She hung her head.

“We’re worth loving, Damian, maybe we’re just asking the wrong people to love us.”

“Perhaps you are…” His eyes narrowed, and then he stood. “But I was under the impression a father was supposed to love his son.” She blinked. This wasn’t about Jon?

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m his blood son, and he hardly trusts me! Mother always told me stories about him, wonderful, fanciful things about his strength, his power.” He crossed the training mat to the bench where Alfred had left some water for them both. He grabbed one and tilted it back until he’d sucked half of it down, wiping at his mouth with the back of his wrist. “She always told me I’d make him proud, but since I got here, I’ve been nothing but a disappointment. Father  _ chose _ them.  _ I _ was a burden my mother threw upon him, that he puts up with.”

“Damian… I’m sure that’s not true.”

“You wouldn’t know! You’ve only been here for a handful of weeks.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t, but I can’t imagine your dad not caring about you--!”

He twisted away, and she stood and followed after him. His back was rigid, stone, cold, fists clenched at his sides as his water bottle, now empty, bent and shriveled under his hand. “Then why does he always berate me when I do my job? Instead of a  _ good work, Robin _ , I get lectured and benched! Father thinks I’m a monster! And maybe he’s right.”

Her fingers brushed against his knuckles, and she could feel his skin was soft, even with all of his training and sketching, smooth like baby skin. She pulled lightly on his fingers, telling him to unclench, and slowly he did. With his fist unfastened, she traced her hand up to his arm, tugging at the bend. He turned to her, begrudgingly, and she stepped closer. “Damian, you’re not a monster. I’m sure your dad loves you, you’re just butting heads a little! Maybe try to talk to him?”

“I  _ have _ tried! And all it gets me is grounded. I’d rather be in the field than kept prisoner in my own house.”

“Yeah… I guess I get that.” Adrien’s green eyes and small smile flashed through her mind.

“Damian! Damian! You’ll never guess what happened--!” She froze, as did Damian, as a flash of blue and red came barreling down the stairs into the batcave, but there weren’t even feet, not on the steps anyway. She squeaked and clung to Damian’s arm, and he tensed under her touch. There were a few moments of silence as the blur took shape and appeared as a boy their age, floating a foot off the floor and a foot away from them. The realization came slowly as she pieced together raven hair, big blue eyes with long eyelashes, lanky legs that floated off the ground. He floated there, staring at them, blues even wider than she imagined they regularly were. He blinked. She blinked. Damian stared. Superboy’s eyes trailed the way down to her hands on Damian’s arm, and they stayed there for a few moments, ten seconds longer than was comfortable, before they trailed back up to her face.

Damian set his free hand on his hip, while she waved and gave Superboy a very awkward smile. “Jon.”

“Uh, hey… Damian.” Superboy’s nose scrunched up, lips pursing like he was trying to figure out what to say, or trying not to say it. He landed a few feet away from them, but looked like he wanted to get closer. “Um, nice to meet you. I’m--”

“Superboy! Jon Kent! Yes! Hi! M-My name is Marinette!” Like an idiot, she offered her hand to shake, and he took it, shooting her a small smile, though she could tell there was a little strain.

“You probably know her better as Ladybug.”

“Damian!” She hissed and pulled away from him, stomping angrily. Domain just smiled.

“Ladybug? As in Ladybug and Chat Noir? Cool! What are you doing in Gotham?” His eyes lit up, like a little boy on Christmas day. His beam was infectious, just as bright as Adrien’s smile on the best of days, less restricted, freer. He got closer, arms raised in eager anticipation. She smiled right back, feeling the tension drain from her body. This wasn’t so scary, after all.

“Batman decided he wanted to train Chat Noir and I, so I guess I’m gonna be a regular face around here for a while.”

“Marinette and I were just training, since Dick has been doing a wretched job of it.” Superboy’s eyes trailed back down to their hands, which were only a few inches from brushing.

“Oh… training, huh?”

“Yes, now are you going to share what had you barging down the batcave door, or are you going to stand there gawking at the girl, Hickville?”

“I’m not gawking! There are plenty of pretty girls at school, you know, I just feel bad this one is spending her free time with you!” Pretty girl? Her? Her cheeks flushed.

* * *

There were only a few moments he’d seen the day of that Alya was speechless. One of them was that first time Carapace made an appearance, this time, it was because there was a batarang in her hand, and Adrien Agreste had put it there. She stared down at it, jaw unlatched and hanging wide open, eyes not quite wide, but lost, looking at the batarang, or past it, into a sea of nothingness. He wasn’t sure what was going through her mind, he hadn’t even told her that he’d found that in Marinette’s backpack, but he’d called her and told her that he had news on Marinette, so he imagined she already knew. The small red light blinked up at her, reflecting off the frame of her glasses. He watched with interest as she digested. “You… this… Marinette is being tracked by Batman?”

“I don’t like it, but it means we were right to go looking. If Batman has taken an interest in Marinette, it means she’s gotten into something bad.”

“But… I just don’t understand! How! You’d think Ladybug and Chat Noir would have gotten involved, but Batman? From all the way in Gotham? Something’s not right.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, wincing as he dug up the courage to say it, because he was right, and he knew it, but Alya would be mad. “We have to ask Marinette.”

Alya looked at him for a second, brows furrowing, and then she scoffed. “Sunshine, you’re wrong if you think she’s gonna talk.”

“But we have the batarang now! It’s proof that she’s hiding something.”

“Do you want her to lie to us again? Because that’s how you get her to lie to us again.” She shook her head. “No, we need more. We need a working theory, we need more evidence…” her eyes lit up. “Or… we need to ask somebody else.”

He squinted at her. “What? Alya, if she hasn’t told you, she wouldn’t have told anybody!” No, if even Alya, even  _ her parents _ didn’t know what Marinette had gotten herself into, there was no way anybody else had heard a peep about this, whatever this was. He had to hand it to Marinette, she was awfully good at keeping secrets when she wanted to. Belatedly, he thought she would have been a good Miraculous holder, had she not accidentally outed herself to him as multimouse. “Besides, we can’t just go around asking our class about this, it could get her in even deeper trouble.”

“Oh we won’t be asking our friends,” Alya whipped out her phone, swiped in her code, swiped up, and scrolled until she landed on the contact she wanted. The hand she held the batarang in set it to her bedroom’s desk, while the other busied itself holding the phone to her ear as it rang. She shot Adrien a glance over her shoulder, and a wink. “We’ll be asking Batman.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 8/20/20: Sorry, guys. I think I'm gonna have to wrap this one up here. This fandom is a little too angry, a little too ready to jump at their not-preferred character's neck, and a little too immature. This fic is going to be discontinued, at least for now, and marked as complete. I'm sorry for those of you waiting on the next chapter, I just really can't muster up the want to write for this fandom anymore.
> 
> That said, I am still in the batfam fandom, and I feel like I'm really thriving there! (Only reason this story might not be totally dead, actually lol) 😁 So if you all still wanna see and interact with me, you can totally catch me on my socials:  
> https://iamwhelmed.tumblr.com/  
> https://detectivedamian.tumblr.com/ (my batman/batfam sideblog)  
> https://www.instagram.com/sometimesicosplay/
> 
> I'm friendly, and I always answer asks-- or try to! lol Thanks for reading!


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